Trump undermines election hours before voting closes: ‘Protest, protest, protest’

The former president’s claims of widespread voter fraud in the midterm elections are verifiably false

Former President Donald Trump is spending election day trying to undermine Americans’ trust in the election process on Truth Social.

Mr Trump used his social media platform to baselessly insinuate that voter fraud was occurring in several states during the midterm elections and encouraged voters to “protest, protest, protest.”

"The Absentee Ballot situation in Detroit is REALLY BAD. People are showing up to Vote only to be told, ‘sorry, you have already voted.’ This is happening in large numbers, elsewhere as well. Protest, Protest, Protest," he wrote on his social media platform.

What Mr Trump is referring to is an incident in which some Detroit voters who went to cast a ballot in-person were told they had already voted absentee. What he leaves out from his post is that no one was told they could not vote, and their ballots were still counted.

"Some voters in Detroit who voted in person were told they had already voted absentee. The department of elections is aware of the problem – hard lists will be used not electronic ones – and everyone will be allowed to vote," Charlie Langton, an attorney and legal analyst for Fox 2 Detroit, reported.

A lawsuit brought by Michigan’s Republican candidate for Secretary of State, Kristina Karamo seeking to force voters who cast absentee ballots to either vote in person or obtain an absentee ballot by visiting the Detroit City Clerk’s office was thrown out on Monday. The lawsuit, has it succeeded, likely would have invalidated thousands of absentee ballots that had already been cast during early voting.

Mr Trump also claimed that voting machine malfunctions in Maricopa County are "greatly harming" Republicans like gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Senate candidate Blake Masters.

In a video bulletin to Arizona voters posted on Truth Social, Mr Trump said: "To the great people of Arizona, Maricopa County in particular: don't leave your line. Stay where you are.

“They say that the machines aren’t working, they say that they're running out of paper in diferent locations throughout different states – there's a lot of bad things going on...

“Stay in line. Do not leave. They want to delay you out of voting, and you cannot let them delay you out of voting..,, already a lot of people have left, and it's very, very unfair what's going on. Maricopa County, don't leave – stay there."

While approximately 20 per cent of the counting machines in Maricopa County did experience malfunctions, Bill Gates, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors chairman, released a video explaining the situation and assured voters that everyone’s vote would be counted.

He said that Maricopa County voters could vote anywhere in the county and that those who did vote at the sites with malfunctioning machines would still have their votes counted, though they would first have to be transferred to a balloting location with functional counters.

In a third post, Mr Trump claimed that the "same thing is happening with Voter Fraud as happened in 2020???"

As no widespread voter fraud was found to have occurred in the 2020 election, Mr Trump appears to have shared correct information.