Seventy percent of Trump supporters believed that had the Democratic candidate been declared victorious, the vote must have been rigged. One obvious way forward is to defeat populists with such overwhelming majorities that charges of fraud will just seem too far-fetched. Another is to involve international election monitors even more closely, though that constitutes no guarantee that populists will accept the outcome. A more cynical — but alas, perhaps sometimes necessary — solution is to offer populist losers a way out such that they do not lose everything if they lose a vote. Obviously, for kleptocrats, an election defeat can pose an existential danger when they feel that there is no option between the president’s palace and prison.

Source: International New York Times May 08, 2019 14:37 UTC