Trump, making false claims about mail-in ballots, suggests counting votes could lead to 'violence in the streets'

• President Donald Trump made more false claims about mail-in voting on Monday, leading Twitter to label one of his posts as potentially "misleading."
• Trump was particularly incensed by the US Supreme Court's decision not to hear a Republican challenge regarding mail-in votes in Pennsylvania.
• Pennsylvania election officials will count ballots that are received up to 72 hours after November 3, so long as there is no evidence they were cast after Election Day.
• Trump suggested counting such votes would lead to "violence in the streets."

President Donald Trump appears to be pinning his hopes in Pennsylvania on preventing every vote cast in the commonwealth from being counted, with his latest dubious attack on mail-in voting flagged by Twitter on Monday as potentially "misleading."

In 2016, Trump won Pennsylvania by fewer than 45,000 votes. This time, however, former Vice President Joe Biden has been leading in the polls there ever since he won the Democratic nomination — on the eve of the election, he's up by an average of 4.9 percentage points.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, all Pennsylvanians are eligible to cast their vote by mail. But amid Trump's constant stream of unsubstantiated claims about the practice, his supporters seem far less likely to do so. Only 25% of mail-in ballots in the state were requested by registered Republicans.

Trump's latest claim is that counting these votes, up to three days after the election, "will allow rampant and unchecked cheating."

The president repeated that baseless theory in person.

—Sam Levine (@srl) November 3, 2020

Neither Trump nor his allies have provided a coherent explanation for how counting ballots could enable fraud or why Democrats, if they were capable of stealing an election, would rely on ballots received after Election Day that are already subject to litigation. What they have done is explain that challenging the legitimacy of Americans' votes — stopping them from being counted — is central to their strategy.

Axios reported on Sunday that three aides to the president said he planned to claim "victory" on Tuesday night even if votes were not done being counted in important states like Pennsylvania. Accordingly, Axios said, "Trump's team is preparing to falsely claim that mail-in ballots counted after Nov. 3 — a legitimate count expected to favor Democrats — are evidence of election fraud."

As Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar explained on NBC's Meet the Press, "elections have never been called on election night" — at least officially. It is news organizations, not state governments, that call winners and losers on Election Day using early results and statistical probabilities.

Last month, Pennsylvania's highest court upheld a policy of counting mail-in ballots that arrive until November 6, so long as there is no evidence they were cast after Election Day. The US Supreme Court this week decided not to hear a Republican challenge to that ruling, for now deciding not to penalize voters for delays in mail delivery; it could revisit the issue pending future litigation.

On Twitter, Trump called that nondecision "dangerous," adding another claim about mail-in voting that sounded more like incitement: "It will also induce violence in the streets." In person, he repeated what appeared to be a threat: "There's a lot of bad things that can happen with the streets. You're going to have a population that's going to be very angry."

It is unlikely, albeit not impossible, that it will come to that. As of Sunday, 82% of Democrats who requested mail-in ballots had already returned them. The 2.4 million ballots returned overall was also equal to just under 40% of all votes cast in the state in 2016.

If Trump loses Pennsylvania, odds are he's already lost it.

Have a news tip? Email this reporter: cdavis@insider.com