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Image source,Reuters
President Trump criticized the plan to increase the size of the votes sent by mail in the upcoming presidential election, claiming this would lead to widespread fraud, but what evidence is there?
GETTY
Mail-in ballots are very dangerous, there is tremendous fraud involved.
The United States in the global pandemic of the new coronavirus is full of unknowns, and the number of Americans sending votes by mail is expected to reach a record high.
The election administration and postal service are already under tremendous pressure to process millions of additional ballots mailed.
This has led some people to claim that the relevant system is insecure and to suspect electoral manipulation.
Have there been problems with past elections?
A large number of studies at the national and state levels have shown that although there have been individual cases, voter fraud is very rare.
There are some very rare but well known instances, such as the 2018 North Carolina primary election, when a Republican candidate’s aide tampered with the ballot and the election had to be restarted.
Federal Election Commission Chair Ellen Weintraub said: “The conspiracy theory that voting by mail causes fraud is simply unfounded.”
Image source,fake images
Let’s take a look at some specific examples of suspected fraud this year.
In mid-October, Trump said in a rally speech: “In Virginia, half a million applications are false.”
These absentee ballot request forms are due to incorrect return addresses.
However, the Virginia election authority stated that there was no intent of fraud and that the error had been corrected.
The Virginia Center for Election Information (CVI) said, “We have worked for several weeks to ensure that no Virginia voter is inconvenienced by our misprints.”
The Virginia Election Information Center reported that as of October 19, 300,000 registered voters had returned their absentee ballot request forms.
Image source,Reuters
In early October, about 50,000 voters in Frankson County, Ohio, received incorrect ballots in the mail.
However, there is no evidence that this is due to cheating.
The local electoral committee stated that all affected people have received the correct voting forms and that prevention and control measures are in place to ensure that no one votes twice.
The committee declared that a voting error was a “serious error.”
However, in response to the president’s tweet, the committee also stated: “Our committee is bipartisan and our elections are fair.”
“Every vote will be counted.”
- inNew YorkAfter the name and address were incorrectly printed, nearly 100,000 ballots were forwarded to voters.
- inMichiganAbout 400 ballots made a mistake by listing Trump’s presidential campaign partners, imprinted as Jeremy Cohen of the Libertarian Party instead of Mike Pence. President Trump claimed in September that this was intentional. But the Michigan Secretary of State claimed that something went wrong and that “affected voters have immediately received the correct votes, as well as the relevant guidelines to ensure their votes will be counted.”
- inWisconsinA mail containing several absentee ballots was found in a ditch near the city of Greenville. Although there has been an investigation, it is unclear how it happened. The White House accused him of fraud.
- inPennsylvaniaNine abandoned military ballots were found. According to the US Department of Justice, seven of them were “voted for by candidate Donald Trump.”
- inNew JerseyA postman was prosecuted after throwing hundreds of emails into the trash, including nearly 100 ballots. After being discovered, the mail was sent to the original recipient.
However, these are all individual incidents.
There is still a lot of evidence to show that voting by mail is safe and secure.
There are provisions to prevent people from impersonating voters or stealing votes; For example, authorities will verify if the votes come from the voter’s registered address and will require signatures on envelopes.
These precautions will apply to all ballots sent by mail.
What if there are “tickets”?
In 26 states, due to old age or poor health, it is legal for one person to collect votes and cast votes on behalf of a group of voters.
However, the number of votes that a person can cast on their behalf is limited.
For example, in Minnesota, a third party can only serve three ballots.
The largest and potentially illegal form of proxy voting is called “voting.”
There are reports of ticket fraud in Texas and Minnesota.
However, none have been confirmed.
Video: The Voting College System in the US Presidential Elections
Can the system handle it?
Although there is very little evidence of actual fraud, the unprecedented scale of vote-by-mail in this election means that overload is likely to occur.
President Trump pressed this and warned his millions of followers on social media, saying that “there are big problems and differences in votes sent by mail across the United States.”
“There should be a final tally result on November 3,” he said.
But counting all ballots, including a large number of ballots mailed, will take much longer.
Also, it is highly likely that there will be no clear winner on election night or even several days later.
