Trump seizes on small election issues to spread concern
Nine ballots discarded in Pennsylvania. A mail carrier who altered a handful of affidavit ballot applications. People being sent double ballots.
In the run up to Election Day, President Donald Trump is seizing on small, potentially routine voting issues to suggest the election is rigged. But there is no evidence there is any widespread voter fraud as the president has suggested.
Nevertheless, his comments have been amplified by his campaign, supporters and allies, including Attorney General William Barr, adding heft to the claims.
“Mail ballots, they cheat,” Trump said last month. During the presidential debate last week, he insisted the election had already been “rigged,” adding: “As far as the ballots are concerned, it’s a disaster.”
But voter fraud has proved exceedingly rare. And even a panel commissioned by the Trump administration to explore the issue uncovered no evidence to support claims of widespread voter fraud.
Five states routinely send ballots to all registered voters so they can choose to vote through the mail or in person, and four other states and the District of Columbia will be adopting that system in November, as will almost every county in Montana.
Even as the president rails against mail-in voting, he has acknowledged that he voted by absentee ballot in the past. But Trump’s decision to seize on the small number of issues — they occur in every election — exemplify the president’s monthslong effort to sow doubt about the integrity of the election before it’s even arrived and to preemptively call into question the results.
Particularly, the president has seized on an election worker’s decision to discard nine military ballots in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, which a state elections official said amounted to a mistake and not “intentional fraud.” Still, the president brought up the case, saying it was evidence of election fraud. He mentioned it twice during Tuesday night’s presidential debate.
The Justice Department has said seven of the nine ballots found discarded in a wastebasket in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, had Trump’s name.