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Joe Biden sowed doubt about the integrity of the presidential election by suggesting on Saturday that the only way he can lose is if there is chicanery at polling stations.
“Make sure you vote. Because the only way we lose this is by the chicanery going on relative to polling places,” the Democratic presidential nominee told supporters in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Biden later told reporters that he will accept the outcome of this election and said he was referring to attempts that are made to try to influence and scare people from voting.
It was a line that echoed President Donald Trump’s repeated efforts to question election integrity. The president, whos trailing Biden in most national and battleground state polls, has suggested without evidence that mail-in ballots are subject to widespread fraud, and is preparing to potentially challenge results that don’t go his way. “The only way were going to lose is if there’s mischief,” Trump said last month.
Biden’s warning
Biden has been urging his supporters to vote in numbers that give him a clear victory so that Trump has no grounds to contest the outcome.
“The American people are voting and they’re voting in large numbers,” Biden told reporters, saying his earlier remark was taken out of context. “They’re going to determine the outcome and I’m going to accept the outcome of the election without any question.”
But the former vice presidents comment’s Saturday came off as a warning about bad things happening at polling places -- the same kind of warning for which hes chastised Trump.
At a fundraiser in July, Biden warned of the potential for chicanery and said his campaign had built a network of lawyers to fight for the integrity of the election.
In a September Facebook post, Donald Trump Jr, the president’s son, urged able-bodied supporters to join an army for Trump’s election security.
Trump campaign’s challenges
Biden spoke in Pennsylvania hours after a district judge there rejected the Trump campaign’s challenge to the State’s vote by mail procedures, as well as the campaign’s attempt to allow poll watchers who do not live in the county they want to monitor.
Separately, Pennsylvania Republicans are asking the US Supreme Court to require that all mail-in ballots in the State be counted by Election Day.
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