Alan Lichtman argues that President Donald Trump has earned a dark place in American history — one that, in the historian's view, should begin not with his electoral wins or policy record, but with his sustained effort to undermine confidence in the nation's elections.

Writing in his Salon column on Wednesday, October 28, Lichtman said Trump will not be remembered for his political victories or policies, but for what he calls a relentless campaign to destroy truth in the electoral system.

"He has done more than any American in history to convince his fellow citizens that their votes are not counted honestly," Lichtman wrote. "That dubious achievement belongs in the first line of his obituary."

Lichtman, an American University history professor nicknamed "Nostradamus" for his election predictions — a reputation built on the "Keys to the White House," the forecasting model he has used to project presidential outcomes since the 1980s — said Trump has effectively worked to tear apart the nation's faith in its elections. His indictment comes less than a week before the November 3 midterms, the first nationwide federal election of Trump's second term, at a time when Trump is once again claiming elections are rigged.

The historian cited an October 18 report by CBS News' 60 Minutes, which found that Trump had made more than 150 claims of election rigging in the first 21 months of his second term alone. He highlighted the irony of that position, noting that Trump won the 2024 election and his party controls both houses of Congress.

"This is not the grievance of a defeated candidate," Lichtman wrote. "It is the drumbeat of a sitting president who won an historic election in 2024, controls the executive branch, and still insists that the system that elected him is rotten."

Lichtman described Trump's July 16 address from the White House as the "centerpiece" of the president's election lies. In that speech, Trump claimed elections were vulnerable to being stolen, citing heavily redacted documents as proof — documents that election officials and security experts say show no evidence of election rigging.

Trump's 2020 claim that the election was stolen from him, Lichtman noted, went through audits, recounts, and multiple court cases, yet the result remained the same.

Lichtman also surveyed American presidential history: John Adams conceded to his rival, Thomas Jefferson; Abraham Lincoln "held an election he expected to lose and privately pledged to cooperate with his successor"; and Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush all conceded without a fuss.

For Lichtman, the issue is bigger than a single election dispute. A democracy requires that losers accept results so the American public can trust the process — a principle he says could be tested on Tuesday as the two parties await the counting and certification of midterm votes, the formal process by which state and local officials confirm election results.

In his assessment, Trump's midterm campaign is in some ways more about setting up a rigged-election claim than helping Republican candidates win. At a campaign rally in Georgia earlier this month, the president claimed that Senator Jon Ossoff's election victory was illegitimate.

While Lichtman concedes there is cause to criticize election rules and partisan redistricting, he distinguishes those issues from baseless attacks on how ballots are tallied. He describes Trump's pledge to accept the midterm results if they are "honest" as another way of saying "if the Republicans win."

Lichtman concluded the column by predicting that, in the face of defeat, Trump will repeat his post-2020 behavior, with "more lawsuits and pressure on Republican legislators and election officials to alter results."

This article is based on an original report by Alternet.