"I've been looking at polling places for 38 years as part of my duties and passion for [the] Republican party doing well in elections. We've been looking for fraud and I know what evidence is available, and there's not anything like enough evidence to make the bold assertion that our elections are rigged and fraudulent. And it is a perilous thing for a president of the United States to be saying that," Ben Ginsberg says.
Ginsberg oversaw George W. Bush's recount effort in the 2000 presidential election , and he advised 4 of the last 6 presidential nominees on election law, including Trump. He was THE go to guy when it came to Republicans in Election Law for the last 20 years or more.
Ginsberg retired from law practice earlier on August 31, and a week later the historically tight-lipped legal eagle began to speak out in warning the country about the almost daily disinformation about voting coming from President Trump. He published an op-ed in The Washington Post on September 8, and another just this week. He has appeared on numerous TV news shows.
His main message is two-fold. One, election fraud is rare and there is no proof of anything close to what Trump constantly claims is reality. And second, the president's words are dangerous and harmful to the country.
We talk here about Trump's recent rhetoric about poll watchers, and about the notion that a handful of isolated incidents mentioned recently by the president are evidence of a rigged election.
Here's what he said about the examples Trump is harping on: "There are 10,500 jurisdictions in the country who have some responsibility over the casting and counting of ballots. That's the way our system is. But with that many moving parts, there will be an uneven quality of people and procedures in each of those jurisdictions and mistakes will happen. Mistakes happen every cycle, they should be rooted out, they should be corrected, but that should not be confused with widespread fraud that yields inaccurate elections … I'm afraid that people who say it's the tip of the iceberg, in fact, are looking at ice cubes that got dropped in the water and melt on contact," he said. "And they're confusing the tip of the iceberg for a melting ice cube."
Outro music: "Pancho and Lefty" by Townes Van Zandt
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