Trump’s Latest Voter Fraud Misinformation
President Donald Trump continues to add false and exaggerated statements to his already lengthy list of bogus voter fraud claims.
- There is no evidence to back up Trump’s blanket claim that “mailed ballots are corrupt.” Voting experts say the president is exaggerating when he says mail ballots are “fraudulent in many cases.” While the instances of voter fraud via mail-in or absentee ballots are more common than in-person voting fraud, the number of known cases is relatively rare.
- Trump also falsely claimed that California reached a settlement with Judicial Watch in which the state “agree[d] that a million people should not have voted.” California and Los Angeles County agreed to remove inactive voters from their voter rolls per federal law. But there’s no evidence any of them voted, fraudulently or otherwise.
- And as he has in the past, Trump claimed there’s “a lot of fraudulent voting going on in this country.” Experts say voter fraud is rare.
Trump’s latest round of voter fraud claims came as Wisconsin struggled with an election at a time when residents were wary of going to polls during the coronavirus pandemic.
Some Wisconsin Democrats, including Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, urged to hold the election by mail and suspend in-person voting. Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers tried to move the state’s April 7, but after a Republican challenge, the state Supreme Court ruled the governor’s decision was unconstitutional and the election went off as scheduled on April 7 with long lines and fewer polling places.
With uncertainty about the safety of voting in the presidential election November, some Democrats have called for mail-in voting to be considered as an alternative. Former Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, has that a mail-in ballot should be sent to every voter in the country.
