Donald Trump Says He Will Accept Election Results 'If I Win'

DELAWARE, OH — Donald Trump told a crowd at the Delaware County Fair on Thursday that he would "absolutely accept the election results — if I win."

"I want to make a major announcement today," Trump said. "I would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supporters and to all of the people of the United States that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election — if I win."

He added that he would accept a "clear result" but would reserve his right to contest or file a legal challenge in the case of a questionable result. "Of course, I will follow and abide by the rules and traditions of all of the many candidates that have come before me," he said. "Bottom line, we're going to win. We're going to win so big."

During the third and final presidential debate Wednesday night, following his several public accusations that the Nov. 8 election would be rigged against him, Trump refused to say he would concede a loss on election night. "I will look at it at the time," Trump said. He added: "I will keep you in suspense."

At the rally, Trump wondered aloud if Al Gore had agreed to concede his race with George W. Bush prior to the 2000 election, would the court cases that followed have been allowed? "I'm being asked to waive centuries of legal precedent designed to protect voters," he said.

He also accused the Hillary Clinton campaign of encouraging voter fraud, citing emails released in the WikiLeaks email dump.

He also cited a Pew study from 2012 that found 24 million voter registrations were either invalid or inaccurate. That same study also found that nearly 2 million dead Americans were still registered to vote. Pew attributed much of the inaccuracies to confusion on the part of voters, using, as an example a family that moves but does not immediately update its registration.

During the stump speech, Trump said that the 1.8 million dead Americans registered to vote still managed to vote. However, Pew included that statistic to illustrate the need for an updated registration system and did not indicate that any number of that group have had their names used while voting, the Los Angeles Times said.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr Commons