No evidence of decisive election fraud — Barr

WASHINGTON: The US a orney general rejected Republican claims of significant voter fraud in the presidential election on Tuesday, adding to the pressure on President Donald Trump to give up his quixotic effort to overturn Joe Biden’s clear victory.

Bill Barr’s comments confirmed the conclusions of the Department of Homeland Security, US intelligence and independent poll watchers that the 2020 election was, in the language of government officials, the ‘ most secure in American history’.

“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” he told the Associated Press.

Barr’s interview came as Trump persisted in claiming, without evidence, that fraudulent voting practices and systems in key states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia had robbed him of a second term.

In tweets Tuesday a ernoon, Trump highlighted testimony being offered in a public hearing on the election in Michigan, which has already certified Biden’s win in the state, and a separate Republican-organised event in Virginia.

“People are coming forward like never before. Large truck carrying hundreds of thousands of fraudulent (FAKE) ballots to a voting centre? TERRIBLE - SAVE AMERICA!” he wrote.

In several legal filings — all rejected by the courts — the Trump campaign has sought to invalidate millions of votes for Biden based on claims that lacked any evidence.

According to official vote tallies, Biden earned 6.2 million more votes than Trump and captured 306 state-by-state Electoral College votes, well above the 270 needed to win the presidency.

But Trump’s campaign has strived to delay the popular vote tally from being finalised before the Electoral College meets on Dec 14 to certify the election winner.

To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election. Bill Barr

His a orneys, led by Rudy Giuliani, have made numerous allegations ranging from ballotbox stuffing and fake ballot printing, to thousands of dead people having voted, to votecounting machines being programmed to favor Biden.

Barr, an ally of Trump, didn’t address specific claims, but dismissed the idea of any ‘systemic’ fraud that would have changed the outcome of the vote.

Any problem for which there has been evidence, Barr noted, would impact an insignificant number of votes.

“There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud, and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results,” he told the AP.

“And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that,” he said, referring to the departments of Homeland Security and Justice.

There was no immediate reaction to Barr from Trump. — AFP