President Donald Trump’s efforts to sow public distrust in election results and expand federal control over elections have so far made little headway, according to a new report from a group of experts who track the health of American democracy.
The finding comes a month after Trump delivered a primetime address to the nation in which he falsely claimed that American election systems were vulnerable to being hacked. “Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen,” Trump said in his address. “And the trust of the American people was lost.”
But a recent YouGov poll and a survey of 568 political science experts showed “no measurable change” since Trump’s speech in confidence in the expected integrity of vote-counting in the fall’s midterm elections, according to Bright Line Watch, a group of political scientists that monitors American democratic practices.
“One measure of success would be a big change in public opinion,” Brendan Nyhan, co-director of Bright Line Watch and a professor at Dartmouth College, told MS NOW. “We didn’t observe that.”
Surveys of experts and the public also showed no major change since a similar survey in March of views on whether American elections “are conducted, ballots counted, and winners determined without pervasive fraud or manipulation.”
The group’s latest survey found that 81% of experts and 43% of Americans believe that American elections are free from manipulation.
Bright Line Watch also whether federal courts can effectively limit executive branch power, a practice that experts say is also a sign of a healthy constitutional democracy.
Since January, Trump has mounted an unprecedented effort to expand federal oversight of elections by demanding that states turn over their voter lists to the federal government. But 21 federal judges — including one earlier this month — have ruled against Trump.
The judges found that the Constitution gives primary responsibility for elections and vote-counting to state and local officials. Experts say state and local control of vote-counting prevents presidents and their appointees from determining whether a president is re-elected and whether the president’s party controls Congress.
Nyhan said the nearly two dozen defeats for Trump over voter rolls are a sign that the courts, a coequal branch of government, are effectively limiting executive branch power.
“The system seems to be holding up,” said Nyhan. “The decentralized structure of American elections is working.”
Trump administration officials say they may appeal the lower court rulings to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority.
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