"It’ll
be fixed, it will be rigged. People ought to get smart. This is going
to be the greatest election disaster in history."
– Donald
Trump, during a roundtable discussion with the leadership from the
National Association of Police Organizations.
President Trump has made
it clear that he does not support allowing all registered voters
access to mail ballots this fall, even during a pandemic. And, he
keeps changing his story about why he's opposed.
Trump has claimed ballots
would be stolen out of mailboxes. He said mail-in voting would boost
Democrats and prevent Republicans from winning future elections.
Trump said mail-in voting would “rig the 2020 election,” and he
has also claimed, without evidence, that foreign countries would
print and send in “millions of mail-in ballots.”
Former Pennsylvania Gov.
Tom Ridge, a Republican and also the nation's first secretary of
homeland security, said …
"I think it's very
sad and very disappointing that with almost five months to go, the
president seems to [want to] try to delegitimize the Nov. 3 election.
It just seems to me that this may be an indication he's more worried
about the outcome than he's worried about fraud."
(Miles Parks. “FACT
CHECK: Trump Spreads Unfounded Claims About Voting By Mail.”
National Public Radio. June 22, 2020.)
Experts have told us that
voter fraud via mail-in ballots is rare. Five states already conduct
elections primarily by mail-invote: Utah, Colorado, Hawaii,
Washington and Oregon. All of them will send registered voters a
mail-in ballot in advance of the election, according to the National
Conference of State Legislatures and the individual state election
materials.
In Utah, all but two
counties automatically sent ballots to registered voters in the 2018
elections. Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah told reporters,
according to ABC News: “In my state, I’ll bet 90% of us vote by
mail. It works very very well and it’s a very Republican state.”
(Lori Robertson. “More
False Mail-In Ballot Claims from Trump.” factcheck.org. May
27, 2020.)
The truth is Trump is
planting the seeds to be able to call the electoral process rigged or
fraud-ridden if he loses in November. He has even appointed Louis
DeJoy postmaster general – a man who has no essential credentials,
who has donated millions of dollars to Republican candidates
including President Trump, and who is in charge of fundraising for
the Republican National Convention.
Trump and DeJoy are busily
dismantling the U.S. Postal Service at a time when more Americans
rely upon the USPS for deliveries of supplies while isolating in
place: everything from prescription drugs to household necessities to
paychecks to absentee ballots. Dejoy has stripped the service of
resources, undermining its ability to fulfill a crucial role in
processing votes.
Oregon Senator Ron Wyden
tweeted …
"Donald Trump is
sabotaging the U.S Postal Service in an attempt to rig the election
in his favor.”
Trump, earlier in the week
tweeted that the post office would not be able to handle the influx
of mail ballots that would result from Nevada's decision to mail
every registered voter in the state a ballot.
In most states vote by
mail is through absentee balloting in which the voter must request an
absentee ballot. In 2016, nearly one-quarter of U.S. votes (33
million) were cast by either universal mail or absentee ballots.
34 states plus the
District of Columbia now allow voters in the weeks before an election
to request absentee ballots. Another 11 states have made it easier to
request absentee ballots for primary elections taking place this
year, in large part due to concern over the coronavirus.
As a result of COVID,
there has been extensive fear about long lines and big crowds at
polling places. If there continues to be public concern over the
virus or there is a second infection wave in the fall, some of these
states may extend their absentee voting options to the general
election. States set the rules on mail balloting and election
processes so they can change the rules through bills passed by the
legislature and signed into law by the governor.
The Truth
States have a number of
measures in place to prevent fraud. Many states allow voters to track
their mail-in ballots, giving them confidence that it was received in
the mail. Many states compare the signature on the ballot to the one
on file with election officials, a practice, if done carefully, that
can prevent fraud.
Some states restrict who
can collect a mail-in ballot or even require ballots to be signed by
a witness or notary (Democrats and voting rights groups are
challenging these kinds of restrictions in many states, saying they
are needlessly restrictive during Covid-19).
Several studies have shown
that mail-in voting does not lead to more fraud. A Washington Post
analysis of 14.6m votes cast in three states that automatically mail
a ballot to all voters found just 372 cases of double voting or
voting on behalf of a dead person. A different study of voter fraud
cases maintained by the conservative Heritage Foundation found just
143 cases of criminal convictions involving absentee ballots over the
last 20 years. That amounts to 0.00006% of total votes cast during
that period.
(Sam Levine. “Why
Trump cannot delay the election – plus the truth about mail-in
voting.” The Guardian. July 30, 2020.)
Oregon, which has held all
elections by mail since 2000, has only seen two criminal convictions
for mail ballot fraud in the last two decades. Amber McReynolds of
the National Vote at Home Institute and Charles Stewart of the MIT
Election Data and Science Lab wrote in an op-ed for the Hill …
“With well over 50
million ballots cast [in Oregon], there have been only two fraud
cases verifiable enough to result in convictions for mail ballot
fraud in 20 years. “That is 0.000004 percent — about five times
less likely than getting hit by lightning in the United States.”
Trump is running the
largest misinformation campaign in history as he questions the
legitimacy of voting by mail, a method that will be crucial to
Americans casting their vote in a pandemic. See the president's
campaign for what it is – one of a number of attempts to suppress
the votes of Americans. Trump is actively threatening a free and fair
election.
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