Trump is laying the groundwork to contest an election he could lose. Pennsylvania is ground zero.

PHILADELPHIA — Donald Trump is making Pennsylvania ground zero for preemptive election fraud claims.

When voters in Bucks County, a key suburb outside Philadelphia, faced long lines and early shutdowns while trying to apply and vote in person by mail, Trump aides and allies not only successfully sued to extend the voting period upon request, but also grabbed by him as voter proof suppression and intimidation.

When Lancaster County said it was examining voter registration applications for possible fraud, Trump falsely claimed there were thousands of “fake ballots.” York County said it did received thousands of voter materials analysis — which, Trump said, were “THOUSANDS of potentially FRAUDULENT claims.”

If Trump loses the state, these are the building blocks that could underpin his attempts to overturn that loss.

“Pennsylvania is cheating and being caught, on a scale never seen before,” Trump posted without evidence on his social media site Wednesday morning. And he continued on Thursday: “I caught TRELANT BIG in Pennsylvania. We must announce and NOW, NOW!” he posted. “Who would have ever thought our country was so CORRUPT?”

Both Democratic and Republican election officials in Pennsylvania said the election was safe and secure. But for Trump and his allies, every incident, no matter how big or small, real or perceived, is evidence of a plot to rig the vote in the nation’s biggest battleground state.

In the final days before Election Day, they are blasting allegations of abuse, maladministration by election officials and claims of error in five-alarm fires in Pennsylvania. It’s not just that they’re voicing their concerns — and scoring a few court victories — as both sides have done for decades. It’s the fact that Trump is holding them up as preemptive evidence that the election is being rigged against him.

“Our election integrity team has been notified of legitimate cases of voter fraud and voter suppression by actual voters in the field,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “While the media labels these examples as conspiracy theories, Team Trump and the (Republican National Committee) take each allegation seriously to ensure safe and secure elections for ALL Americans, no matter who they vote for.”

That cascade of charges in Pennsylvania in recent days builds on years of Trump undermining trust in elections. After the 2020 election, the former president and his allies have wreaked havoc in Pennsylvania, a focal point of his bid to retain control of the White House. He and his allies unleashed a torrent of misinformation about the state election; asked the Supreme Court to vacate its findings; and orchestrated a list of bogus voters, even after some original voters in the state balked at the plan.

Local election officials have been the subject of threats, abuse and harassment — and some, including in Philadelphia, have had to use police protection. Two men were arrested on weapons charges outside the vote counting site in Philadelphia after driving from Virginia.

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, a Republican, in a news conference Wednesday called the heated rhetoric an effort to “manufacture outrage” and pointed to a high level of misinformation about voting in the state, without naming names .

“We had free and fair, safe and secure elections. And we’re going to respect the will of the people again, whatever their choices are in this election,” Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro said of Trump’s efforts to overturn the last presidential election. “As for Trump and his rhetoric: this is just a copycat of what he did in 2020.”

Trump and his allies are targeting Pennsylvania again

Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee have at times highlighted routine election administration decisions as evidence that he is under attack.

One of the critical points is that people are trying to vote early. Pennsylvania does not have traditional in-person early voting as other states do — a compromise agreed to years ago by Republican lawmakers. But counties allow voters to request mail-in ballots in person, fill them out and return them in one visit to their local election offices.

That has led to long lines in some situations as offices not built to accommodate voting are crowded with people, and some counties cut those lines before the end of the business day. Republican candidates have argued that the in-person mail-in voting process should be treated like an Election Day vote.

There is no legal requirement to keep offices open late — and voters who were turned away could, local officials point out, have still requested an online ballot or filed in person and picked it up later. Additionally, the State Department told voters to line up at 5 p.m. on the final day they were still allowed to request a ballot.

But rejecting those voters is intentional “voter suppression” and an attempt to rig the election against Trump, according to the former president and his allies. “Stay in line, don’t let anyone take you down and silence your voice,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “We must make it TOO BIG FOR THE KINGDOM!”

Republicans sued Bucks County expand personal postal voting there by Friday, in what RNC Co-Chair Michael Whatley described as a “landmark victory” on a call with reporters Wednesday afternoon. (The original deadline for vote-by-mail applications was Tuesday, and Bucks County officials said they cut their lines because they had grown too long to serve every voter before the 5 p.m. deadline.)

“Today’s big win really represents a defeat for Democrats’ voter suppression efforts,” said Trump’s spokesman, Leavitt.

Democratic Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia said interest in mail-in voting has skyrocketed this year.

“Suddenly there was a rush that had never happened before,” she said. “So of course people wouldn’t be ready for that.”

Trump has also raised allegations of fraud, even when election officials are the ones who catch potential problems and make them public.

Lancaster County announced that it is reviewing 2,500 voter registration applications they turned in just before the deadline, after he found possible problems with some of them. In Trump’s statement, that meant there were “fake ballots” – which is not true. The county attorney’s office said Wednesday its investigation is ongoingand found numerous signs of potential fraud in the records.

He also called out York County for receiving “THOUSANDS of potentially FRAUDULENT voter registrations.” The reality: A third-party group sent out about 3,000 voter registration forms and mail-in ballot requests, at least some of which were legitimate, and the county is going through them to analyze the suspicious ones and prevent any possible fraud.

“WHAT IS HAPPENING IN PENNSYLVANIA???” trump card posted on Truth Social. “Law enforcement must do their job, immediately!!! WOW!!!”

What’s happening, a Pennsylvania election official said, is that county processes are working. “What you see is you have dedicated election officials reporting suspicious activity, records in this case, and I think that proves the system is working,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid being targeted.

Trump has been spreading election conspiracy theories for years

Last Friday, the former president took to social media to issue a “TRY AND QUIT” order.promising “long prison sentences” for “corrupt election officials” and others who want to repeat the 2020 “fraud and fraud”.

“WHEN I WIN, those people who cheated will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law,” he wrote.

It’s a pattern throughout Trump’s political career – he never admits a loss, because it’s definitely been stolen from him. The 2016 Iowa caucuses that Ted Cruz won? Against him and should have been redone. Losing the 2016 popular vote? He he even won it “if you subtract the millions of people who voted illegally.”

Things came to a head in 2020 when Trump questioned the credibility of Americans elections both before and after his loss — which fueled a nationwide fight to overturn the results and ultimately fueled the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Election officials from both parties have said 2020 was a safe election and have repeatedly stressed that officials are prepared for this year’s contest, which is already underway. Tens of millions of Americans have already voted.

Mistakes — sometimes serious — can and will happen, poll workers and experts acknowledge, and bad actors can try to take advantage of the system. But fraud is rare and small, not routine and election-changing.

“A national presidential election is not one election, it’s nearly 10,000 small elections across the country, run by hundreds of thousands of professional poll workers and millions of volunteers,” said David Becker, a critic of Trump’s lies about the election and the director of executive. of the Center for Innovation and Electoral Research.

“It would be irrational to expect this to go perfectly. There is always a little bit of human error,” he said. But, he pointed out, the electoral system is built with multiple redundancies and checks “to make sure the correct result was still achieved”.

Democrats have seen this playbook before

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) said in an interview that the election was “certain” and dismissed Trump’s attempt to undermine it as an act of desperation.

“It’s just a big eye and it’s pathetic,” he said. “If they thought they were going to win and felt confident, they wouldn’t do something like this.”

Fetterman downplayed Trump’s ability to interfere with the election, pointing out that Trump is no longer in the White House. Both Shapiro and Fetterman hit out at Trump.

“The Republican and Democratic clerks of elections made sure in Pennsylvania in 2020 that we had free and fair, safe and secure elections, and they’re doing it again,” Shapiro told reporters Wednesday while campaigning for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Joyce Craig . in New Hampshire “I have a lot of confidence in our system.”

In Erie County, where The state Democratic Party sued — without the accompanying noise — over concerns about the delivery of mail-in ballots, former county Democratic Party Chairman Jim Wertz said he has “the utmost confidence in our elections office.”

But he remains concerned about the cumulative effect of Republicans exaggerating process problems before Election Day.

“All of these things together create a perfect storm for electoral challenges,” Wertz said.

Zach Montellaro reported from Washington, Holly Otterbein reported from Philadelphia and Lisa Kashinsky reported from Concord, New Hampshire.