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President Donald Trump made a statement on Friday morning (11/06) on the counting of votes for the presidential election that took place three days earlier, with a series of allegations of fraud for which he did not provide evidence or evidence.
BBC News has analyzed each of Trump’s statements and tells you here what is true or false.
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1. Trump: “I’ve been talking about votes by mail for a long time. It really destroyed our system. It is a corrupt system and it corrupts the people.”
The US president has made more than 70 posts on Twitter that question the votes in the mail, citing “electoral fraud” or “stolen” elections since April.
But there is no evidence that the system is fraudulent.
Voter fraud is rare in the United States – the proportion is less than 0.0009% of the vote, according to a 2017 study by the Brennan Center for Justice. There is also no evidence to suggest that this is a major problem in this election.
The president himself has already voted by mail in the past. He lived outside the state of Florida, where he had his voter registration, and applied for a vote by mail.
That system is known as an absentee ballot, which Trump said was favorable because he believes it includes greater security guarantees.
But he made a distinction with other forms of voting by mail, such as when states automatically send ballots so that all registered voters can vote by mail if they choose.
The states of Oregon and Utah have already done so successfully in past elections.
2. Trump: “They mailed tens of millions of unsolicited banknotes without any verification measures.”
Registered voters in nine states (plus the capital Washington) automatically received vote-by-mail ballots without having to request them. Five of these states introduced this measure due to the coronavirus pandemic.
But eight of those nine states – Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, Washington, California, New Jersey and Vermont – will not be discussed after the election.
All forms of vote-by-mail have security measures, such as verifying that the ballots come from the voter’s registered address and requiring a signature on the envelopes.
Voting by mail in the United States is nothing new – the system has been used in many elections.
3. Trump: “It’s amazing how one-sided ballots are also so one-sided.”
President Trump has repeatedly criticized plans to expand mail-order voting, saying, without real evidence, that he was the subject of “tremendous fraud.”
He asked Republican voters to appear that day, rather than using mail-in ballots.
There is evidence in the vote count that this is what happened: Democratic voters were more likely to vote by mail, while Republicans preferred to vote in person that day.
The count is not over, but in Pennsylvania it is estimated that of the more than 2.5 million mail-in votes received, there were nearly three times as many votes for Democrats as for Republicans.
Trump attacks the US electoral process and is criticized even by the Republican Party
4. Trump: “In Georgia, a pipe burst in a distant place, totally foreign to the place … and they stopped counting for four hours.”
The pipe burst at the State Farm Arena and affected a room where absentee votes were tabulated.
The team issued a press release, saying that the ballots were not damaged and no equipment was affected. “There was a brief delay in tabulating absentee votes while repairs were being made,” the note said.
5. Trump: “Now there are only a few states to be defined in the presidential race. The voting apparatus in those states is run in all cases by Democrats.”
It is not true that “in all cases” states are governed by Democrats.
In Georgia, which is yet to be defined, the governor and both houses of the legislature are controlled by Republicans.
The Secretary of State, in charge of administering the elections, is Brad Raffensperger, who is a Republican.
Here is a message from Trump on Twitter, posted in 2018, praising Raffensperger. The president of the United States says that “Brad Raffensperger will be a fantastic Secretary of State of Georgia”.
To give another example, Nevada, which also remains without a bottom line, has a Republican secretary of state overseeing its election.
6. Trump: “They would not allow legally foreseen observers.”
An election observer following the count in Philadelphia. – Photo: Reuters via BBC.
At that time, President Trump speaks of election observers. They are people within the polling stations who observe the count, in order to guarantee transparency.
They are allowed in most states, but must be registered before Election Day, usually affiliated with a party or candidate, although the rules vary from state to state.
President Trump questioned the perceived lack of access for Republican observers in certain Democratic-led cities like Philadelphia and Detroit.
But the truth is that survey observers were allowed to observe the count in both cities.
The number of election observers allowed in a polling station varies according to its size. These limits are set before Election Day.
In some areas, the numbers have been restricted, in part to limit the number of people due to the coronavirus. There are also defined limits to avoid bullying.
In Detroit, more than 130 observers representing both Democrats and Republicans were allowed on the site.
City Clerk Janice Winfrey said she had no information on the removal of Republican observers.
In Philadelphia, a viral video shows a certified election observer being turned away at a polling station, but, as we reported, this was due to confusion over the rules and was then allowed to enter.
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said: “Every candidate and every political party can have an authorized representative in the room to watch the process. Some jurisdictions, including Philadelphia, are also broadcasting live, so you can literally watch. the process. counting. ”
7. Trump: “If illegal votes are counted, they may try to steal the election from us. If late votes are counted, we are looking at them very strongly, but many votes are delayed.”
President Trump suggests that counting mail-in votes that arrive after Election Day is “illegal.” But the truth is, overdue invoices can be accounted for in about half the states in the United States, as long as they are postmarked by November 3.
This includes the states of Pennsylvania, Nevada and North Carolina, where a winner has yet to be determined. Deadlines for a mail-in ballot to arrive vary from state to state.
Other states, like Georgia and Arizona, do not count mail-in votes that arrive after Election Day.
In his speech, President Trump said in Pennsylvania that overdue bills were counted “without even a postmark or any identification.”
The State Supreme Court ruled that late ballots with missing or illegible stamps would be counted, unless there is sufficient evidence “to show that they were sent after Election Day.”
Each postal ballot goes through several steps to be verified, such as a signature and address verification.
8. Trump: “A large vote counting center in Detroit again covered the windows with large pieces of cardboard and therefore wanted to block the voting area.”
Trump is referring to the TFC Center in Detroit, Michigan. On Wednesday (04/11), there were chaotic scenes when the election observers claimed that they were locked in the voting room because the windows were covered.
Detroit city attorney Lawrence Garcia said in a statement: “Some, but not all, of the windows were covered, because voters seated near those windows expressed concern about people outside of downtown who were photographing and filming them. them and their work. ”
In fact, there were hundreds of election observers, from both parties, within the counting site. The authorities prevented the entry of more election observers because they had already reached capacity limits.
