CHARLOTTE, N.C — The Republican Party formally nominated President Donald Trump for a second term in the White House Monday, one of the first acts of a GOP convention that has been dramatically scaled down to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Trump took the stage in Charlotte to thank the crowd, who chanted "four more years" at the president. Trump told the crowd, "if you want to really drive them crazy, you'll say '12 more years."

In his speech, he accused Democrats of using voters’ concerns about COVID-19 to steal the upcoming presidential election, again repeating his unfounded claim that the only way Democrats can win is "if the election is rigged."

Until he won, Trump also warned that the 2016 election was going to be rigged.

Voter fraud has proved exceedingly rare. The Brennan Center for Justice in 2017 ranked the risk of ballot fraud at 0.00004% to 0.0009%, based on studies of past elections.

Trump says other votes will be “harvested” by people going door-to-door to collect ballots that voters have not submitted. In addition, he says some states are not verifying signatures on ballots. He did not provide evidence for those claims.

Trump has sought to minimize the toll of the coronavirus pandemic, but its impact was evident as proceedings began in Charlotte. Instead of the thousands of people who were expected to converge on this city for a week-long extravaganza, just 336 delegates participated in a roll-call vote from a Charlotte Convention Center ballroom.

Earlier, the convention renominated Vice President Mike Pence, and he thanked the delegates in person, telling delegates, “we’re going to make America great again — again.”

He added that it will take at least four more years to “drain that swamp,” referring to Washington, D.C., and said that the choice between former Vice President Joe Biden and Trump has “never been clearer and the stakes have never been higher.”

The GOP convention comes at a crucial moment for the president, who is trailing in national and battleground state polls and under intense pressure to turn the race around. Just 23% think the country is heading in the right direction, while 75% think it’s on the wrong path, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Many of the usual trappings of a convention were present on Monday, including signs designating each state and gift bags with Republican swag. But chairs on the ballroom floor were arranged with lots of space between them and convention organizers told participants to wear masks, though adherence to the rule was uneven.

“We are obviously disappointed we could not hold this event in the same way we had originally planned,” GOP Chair Ronna McDaniel said as she began the proceedings while thanking Charlotte for allowing the convention to move forward in its truncated form.

After Trump’s renomination, much of the action is shifting to Washington, D.C., where Republicans will spend the week trying to convince the American people that the president deserves a second term in the White House.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.