WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump friday doubled his considerations of the effects of mail-in voting on Election Day, with caution, delays and fraud can lead to “the biggest electoral crisis in history.”
“It will be repaired, it will be manipulated. People deserve to be smart,” Trump told reporters, without presenting evidence, at a roundtable with leaders of the National Association of Police Organizations. “This will be the biggest electoral crisis in history.”
Trump gave the impression of passing more than he suggested Thursday that the 2020 election deserves to be postponed because of the postal vote. He repeated his long-standing and unde proven claim that the increase in mail ballots was a recipe for voter fraud, adding that a delay in postal service could have election effects on November 3. Some election experts have warned that a dramatic pop-up of ballots by mail may delay the call for a race on election night.
“They think they’re going to send a lot of millions of ballots all over the United States and it’s going to come out,” Trump said. “You may not know the electoral effects for weeks, months, or even years later. You may never know the outcome of the election. And that’s what I’m involved with.”
Trump made a bipartisan coup thursday for a tweet asking if the presidential election would be delayed, a resolution that would require Congressional approval and was categorically rejected by Republicans and Congressional Democrats.
More: McConnell and other more sensible Republicans say Election Day is moving after Trump suspended delay
Later, he gave the impression of moving away from that suggestion, saying that he did not need the delayed elections and that his tweet only raised considerations about the expansion of mail ballots as a fraudulent attempt to manipulate elections, despite several voter fraud studies. mail ballots are rare.
Of the billions of votes cast in all U.S. elections between 2000 and 2012, an investigation through the Brennan Center for Nonpartisan Justice uncovered 491 missing cases of voter fraud.
The president said he was looking for elections to take a stand and predicted that Republicans would do well, but insisted that the state’s efforts to expand the postal vote for those afraid to get COVID-19 in polling stations would be “catastrophic.”
“We’re passing by to make the election very well. No one needs this date more than I do. I’d like us to pass it on, okay?” He said, adding that the government “is ready for an avalanche of millions of ballots.”
He pointed to New York, where election officials struggled to cope with an influx of ballots that House number one competes last month, suggesting that the end result might not be correct.
But all Republicans agree with the president’s message. Republican states in critical states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin are mailing the polls as an option if the pandemic spreads in the fall, while Trump’s own crusade has led states parties to inspire the electorate to request ballots by mail.
“Scares our own voters”: Republicans confront a Donald Trump as they push the vote by mail
Trump is following suspected Democratic candidate Joe Biden in the battlefield states, analysts on both sides recognize that there is enough time for the picture to change. Democrats and other critics say the president’s skepticism about the election is an attempt to sow doubts if the election doesn’t happen.
Steve Schmidt, a former Republican who now opposes Trump’s re-election, said, “Trump is talking about avoiding the election, which he can’t do, but he would if he could, because he loses. He loses because he is the greatest failure in the history of the American presidency. He is the highest incompetent leader in a crisis in American history. Vote.”
Trump endorsed the concept of mail-in ballots, which should be held by seniors, military users, other people with disabilities, and others who cannot vote on Election Day. The White House and Republicans have tried to distinguish between postal votes and universal mail, where ballots are mailed to all registered voters. But election experts argue that postal and postal voting is essentially the same: voting at home.
“No ballots, excellent. Go to the polls, excellent,” Trump said. “If you make universal shipments with millions and millions of ballots, you will never know what the actual final results of an election are. It will be a very, very unhappy day for our country.”
Contribution: John Fritze, David Jackson, Joey Garrison