On Twitter Saturday, Donald Trump Jr. shared a
tweetje about a Breitbart article. The framing of the article and the tweet underscored that hundreds of votes were not cast illegally and perpetuated the president’s claim that voting by post is rudimentary of fraud.
A press release from the Secretary of State of Michigan, Jocelyn Benson, stated that the 846 votes cast for dead voters “[r]to voters who died after casting their absentee ballot just before election day. ”
This is not uncommon for Michigan. Secretary of State Tracy Wimmer, a spokeswoman for the Secretary of State, told the Detroit Free Press that in 2016, more than 1,780 votes were rejected by mail because the voters who submitted them had since died.
In addition to the hundreds of votes submitted by someone who later died, thousands of absent votes were invalidated due to signature issues or late arrival. Benson is calling for changes in legislation to address those issues in the general election.
For example, it supports obligations to contact any voter whose signature on the ballot does not match existing records. The voter would then have the opportunity to personally verify their signature.
Benson is also in favor of legislation that would allow election officials to count mail-in-polls up to two days after Election Day if they were postmarked by Election Day – a practice members of the Trump campaign have taken over issues but is common in various other states.
The spin of what happened in Michigan from Trump Jr. and others is another example in the long line of false and misleading claims about voting via mail. This story of widespread vote-by-post fraud – introduced by the President – includes patent false claims that unocumented immigrants cast ballots, that absent and mail-in votes are fundamentally different, that foreign countries can easily interfere with the process, and so much more. more.
A spokeswoman for Trump Jr. did not return requests for comment.
