‘We want to get rid of the ballots’: Trump won’t commit to peaceful transfer of power, pushing voter fraud claims instead

Donald Trump would not commit to peacefully transferring power to Joe Biden if he loses the election in November, instead saying election officials must “get rid” of any illegal ballots.

“We’re going to have to see what happens. You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots. And the ballots are a disaster,” Mr Trump said at a press conference on Wednesday, a continuation of his repeated attacks on the integrity of expanded mail-in voting programmes states have rolled out amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The reporter who asked the initial question pressed Mr Trump.

“Do you commit to making sure that there’s a peaceful transferral of power?” the reporter asked.

“We want to get rid of the ballots, and you’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly, there’ll be a continuation,” Mr Trump replied.

“The ballots are out of control. You know it,” he said, to which the reporter objected, “No, I don’t know it.”

Mr Trump continued: “And you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats know it better than everybody else.”

The president indicated earlier in the day that he expects to contest the presidential election results if he is losing, a move that could send the case to the Supreme Court.

That potential outcome is one of the many reasons he believes Senate Republicans ought to ram through his nominee to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg before 3 November.

“I think it's better if you go before the election, because I think this scam that the Democrats are pulling — it's a scam — the scam will be before the United States Supreme Court,” the president told reporters at the White House, referring to mail-in votes.

“I think having a 4-4 situation is not a good situation, if you get that,” Mr Trump said of a Supreme Court that could be stalemated on the election results without its ninth justice.

Study upon study has shown virtually no large-scale voter fraud in the US in recent elections.

Democrats have been warning for months that Mr Trump could try to “steal” the election by challenging results in key swing states based on bogus voter fraud claims related to mail-in ballots.

Republicans have already sought to curb mail-in voting through litigation at the state level, including in Pennsylvania.

That state’s supreme court ruled in favour of Democrats last week that election officials could count mail-in ballots that arrive as late as three days after Election Day as long they are post-marked on or before Election Day.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not officially announced a timeline for the confirmation process, but he has said there is plenty of time to hold a confirmation vote by the elections on 3 November.

“We're going to keep our word once again — we're going to vote on this nomination on this floor,” the Kentucky Republican, who is also up for re-election this year, said on Tuesday.

Mr Trump plans to announce his selection of a woman to replace Justice Ginsburg on Saturday.