President Donald Trump seems endlessly paranoid about the usage of mail-in ballots. This Tuesday morning, he posted a demand on Twitter for authorities to stop sending them out and insisted that they’re full of fraud. It’s worth noting, as the president seems to miss over and over again, that not only are his claims of some kind of systematic fraud threat baseless, five states have already been conducting elections almost entirely via the mail. Still, pointing out significant ballot rejection rates in some areas, Trump ranted about supposed “Fraudulent & missing Ballots like never seen before” — which, quite simply, does not actually reflect the reality of the situation.
Nevada knocked this idea yesterday in a motion to dismiss a Trump Campaign lawsuit: "This speculative assertion about ballot interception ignores the processes that are in place to verify a person’s identity after the person returns the ballot to election officials" #Election2020 https://t.co/2NndosbgS5
— Erik Larson (@eelarson) August 25, 2020
He posted:
‘For our Country to be sending 80 million UNSOLICITED BALLOTS is very unfair and a roadmap to disaster. Even recent small and easier to control elections which did this are a catastrophic disaster. Fraudulent & missing Ballots like never seen before. 20% and 30% off. STOP!’
For our Country to be sending 80 million UNSOLICITED BALLOTS is very unfair and a roadmap to disaster. Even recent small and easier to control elections which did this are a catastrophic disaster. Fraudulent & missing Ballots like never seen before. 20% and 30% off. STOP!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2020
That number — “80 million” — seems to be the number of mail-in ballots that Trump’s claiming will be sent out to voters around the country. It’s important to note, among other things, that even in states where authorities have decided to newly send out ballots to all registered voters, not every voter will actually cast their ballot via the mail. It’s not as though in-person polling places will all close. The ballots are simply meant to provide another opportunity for voters to make their voices heard without potentially exposing themselves to the Coronavirus at a polling place. Expanded access to mail-in ballots isn’t a political conspiracy — it’s a basic voting rights and public health step.
Five states – Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington – have been conducting all-mail elections for years. It's safe. https://t.co/cnvW8sT1Dp
— Victor Stoddard (@VicStoddard) August 25, 2020
Trump’s claims of fraud are unfounded. Even in elections where significant numbers of mail-in ballots have been rejected, which is what he seems to be referring to with those percentages, that doesn’t mean that there has been a significant level of attempted fraud. The rejections may simply mean that under the strict verification policies in place around the country — which Trump often seems to ignore — election authorities could not definitively verify that a particular voter had securely filled out a particular ballot. The ballot rejections, in fact, prove the security of the system, since issues are found out and dealt with. The ballot rejections in an age of increased mail-in voting might essentially take the place of the likely numerous Election Day interactions in which voters who come unprepared are turned away from polling places.
Just yesterday he said it was 50 million. By election day, there will be 3 trillion fraudulent votes. https://t.co/bVRhrrUi0X
— John Iadarola (@johniadarola) August 25, 2020
Check out Twitter’s response to the president below:
