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While it has not yet defined whether he retains the presidency or whether his rival, Joe Biden, will replace him in office, the BBC’s Reality Check team verified some of the president’s accusations.
1. “I have been talking about voting by mail for a long time. It has really destroyed our system. It is a corrupt system and it corrupts the people.”
Trump has posted more than 70 tweets questioning voting by mail and has made reference to voter fraud or “rigged” elections since April.
But there is no evidence that the system is corrupt.
Voter fraud is very rare in the US: the rate is less than 0.0009%, according to a 2017 study by the Brennan Center for Justice. There is also no evidence to suggest that it was a major problem in these elections.
Trump himself has voted by mail in the past. He lived outside of his registered state, Florida, and applied to vote by mail.
The ballot he receives is known as an “absentee ballot” and Trump has said he is in favor of it because he believes it has better safeguards.
But it has made distinctions with other forms of voting by mail, such as when states automatically send ballots to all registered voters.
Oregon and Utah have done it successfully in previous elections.
2. “They mailed tens of millions of unsolicited ballots without any verification measures”
Registered voters in nine states (plus Washington DC) were automatically mailed ballots without having to ask for them. Five of these states introduced this measure due to the coronavirus pandemic.
But in eight of the nine states – Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, Washington, California, New Jersey and Vermont – the results are not currently in dispute.
All forms of vote-by-mail have safeguards, such as authorities verifying that the ballots come from a voter’s registered address and that the envelopes are signed.
Voting by mail is not new, it has been used in many elections.
3. “It’s amazing how those vote-by-mail ballots are so unbalancedas “
President Trump has repeatedly criticized plans to expand postal voting, saying, without real evidence, that the system was open to “tremendous fraud.”
He urged Republican voters to go to vote in person on November 3, rather than using mail-in ballots.
There is evidence, based on the vote count, that Democratic voters preferred voting by mail and Republicans voted in person.
The recount is not over, but in Pennsylvania, it is estimated that of the more than 2.5 million mail-in votes received, nearly three times as many came from registered Democrats than Republicans.
4. “In Georgia, a pipe broke in a distant place, totally foreign to where they were counting, and they stopped counting for four hours”
The pipe exploded at the State Farm Arena, affecting a room where absentee ballots were tabulated.
“In two hours, repairs were completed. No ballots were damaged or any equipment was damaged. There was a brief delay in tabulating absentee ballots while repairs were being made,” officials at the State Farm Arena said at a released Tuesday.
5. “Now there are only a few states left to decide the presidential race. The voting apparatus of those states is run in all cases by Democrats.”
That is not true “in all cases”.
In Georgia, which had not announced a winner as of Friday afternoon, the governor and both houses of the legislature are controlled by Republicans.
The Secretary of State, who is in charge of administering the elections, is Brad Raffensperger, who is a Republican.
Here’s a tweet from 2018 Trump backs him up.
“Brad Raffensperger will be a fantastic Georgia Secretary of State and will work closely with @BrianKempGA. It is very important that you go and vote for Brad. Voting Early ….” Trump wrote.
To take another example, in Nevada the secretary of state overseeing the election is a Republican.
6. “They did not admit legally permitted observers”
President Trump referred to election observers with this phrase. These are the people who observe the vote count, with the aim of ensuring transparency.
These observers are allowed in most states, but must register before Election Day, generally being affiliated with a party or candidate, although the rules vary from state to state.
President Trump has spoken out about a perceived lack of access for Republican observers in certain Democratic-led cities, such as Philadelphia and Detroit.
But election observers were able to monitor the count in both cities.
The number of poll watchers allowed in a counting facility varies by size. These limits are set before Election Day.
In some areas, the numbers were restricted, in part due to the coronavirus. Limits are also set to avoid bullying.
In Detroit, more than 130 observers representing Democrats and Republicans were allowed in.
City Clerk Janice Winfrey said she was not aware that Republican observers had been removed.
In Philadelphia, a video showing a certified voting observer being turned away from a counting location went viral, 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: “All political candidates and parties can have an authorized representative in the room to observe the process. Some jurisdictions, including Philadelphia, are also broadcasting live, so you can literally watch. your counting process. “
7. “If they count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us. If they count the votes that were late, we are watching them very carefully, but many votes were late.”
President Trump suggests that counting mail-in votes that arrive after Election Day is “illegal.”
But late postal ballots can be counted in about half of the US states, as long as they are stamped November 3.
This includes the key states of Pennsylvania, Nevada and North Carolina, where a winner has yet to be projected.
Deadlines for determining how late a postal ballot can 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 late ballots in Pennsylvania were counted “without even having any stamp or identification.”
The state Supreme Court ruled that late votes with illegible or missing stamps would be counted unless there is sufficient evidence “to show that they were mailed after Election Day.”
Each postal ballot goes through several steps to be verified, such as checking the signature and the address.
8. “A major vote counting center in Detroit again covered the windows with large pieces of cardboard, so they wanted to protect and block off the counting area.”
Trump is referring to the TFC Center in Detroit, Michigan, located in a key state.
On Wednesday, there were chaotic scenes as election observers claimed they were being prevented from seeing the counting room because the windows were covered.
Detroit’s lead city attorney Lawrence Garcia said in a statement: “Some, but not all, of the windows were covered, because poll workers sitting by those windows expressed concern about people outside of downtown who were photographing them. and filmed them and their work. “
But in fact there were hundreds of election observers, from both parties, inside the counting center. Officials prevented more election observers from entering because capacity had been exceeded.
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