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WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump has presented himself as an unrivaled champion of the American troops. Now, with his presidency at stake, he suspects a participatory democracy tool, the mail-in ballot, that has allowed US military personnel to vote while serving away from home since the War of 1812.
The president has shouted from Twitter “STOP THE COUNT” and has made unsubstantiated accusations that the “surprise dumps” after Election Night are helping his Democratic rival Joe Biden to “steal” the elections.
Meanwhile, Trump insists that military voters’ mail-in ballots must be counted. He even suggested on Friday, without presenting evidence, that the vote-by-mail ballots of some troops had disappeared.
In his dizzying effort to cast doubt on the integrity of the vote, Trump has been all over the map in voting by mail. The volleys have unsettled many veterans and former senior military officials who saw voting by mail as a tether to their civic duty when serving abroad.
“Officials at all levels, including Congress, must tell the president, ‘Sir, you must have the same patience as the rest of the nation,'” said retired Admiral Steve Abbot, who later served as a national security assistant. advisor in the George W. Bush administration.
Abbot is a member of Count Every Hero, a coalition of high-ranking military commanders that advocates that votes from service members are protected and properly counted. He added: “It doesn’t help this democracy that (Trump) continues to sound this alarm. It is inappropriate. “
It’s unclear exactly how many mailed military ballots are left uncounted in the undecided states on the battlefield that will determine who will be the next president. More than 250,000 U.S. service members cast ballots by mail in 2016 and even more were expected to vote by mail this time.
In the 2016 presidential election, Georgia received more than 5,600 ballots from members of the uniformed service; North Carolina received nearly 11,000; Pennsylvania nearly 7,800 and Nevada about 2,700, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
In the tight elections in Georgia, the secretary of state’s office said up to 8,900 ballots requested by service members and U.S. citizens abroad, in addition to the thousands that had already been received and counted, could still arrive before the date. Friday limit.
Trump appeared to be aware of the number of military and foreign votes pending in Georgia, tweeting on Friday: “Where are the missing military ballots in Georgia? What happened to them?”
Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia accept and count ballots from overseas service members arriving after Election Day, provided they are postmarked before polls close.
With Biden approaching the 270 electoral votes needed to take the presidency, Trump has stepped up his effort to cast doubt on the mail-in ballots that state officials are still counting.
“It’s amazing how those mail-in ballots are so one-sided too,” Trump said in remarks at the White House Thursday, hours after falsely claiming in a capitalized tweet that any ballot received after Election Day will not be counted. “I know this is supposed to be an advantage for the Democrats, but in all cases, they are so one-sided.”
In fact, the disparity is not surprising. Biden and other Democrats in the lead up to Election Day urged supporters to vote early and by mail due to concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. Trump urged his supporters to vote in person and maintained the lead in many states among those who voted in person on Election Day.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Thea McDonald said the president believes that “there are and should be exceptions for our military serving our country abroad” to ensure their votes are counted. But McDonald questioned why Pennsylvania election officials should count mail-in ballots for “Democrats in Philadelphia trying to vote after Election Day.”
Kristen Clark, an advocate for voting rights, said the Trump campaign’s suggestion to stop counting legally cast votes for one group (civilians) while continuing the ballot count for another (military personnel) makes no sense.
“It is an indefensible position to say that state laws should apply to one group of voters but not another,” said Clark, chairman of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law.
Trump throughout his presidency has presented himself as a champion of military families. He has enjoyed photographs with the Gold Star families, has credited himself with reducing the number of US troops deployed in “never-ending wars” and has invested new resources in the military.
But for some military families, the fact that Trump has undermined late-arriving vote-by-mail ballots reflects poorly on the commander-in-chief, even as his team has tried to clean up his broad attacks on vote-by-mail.
“Everyone wants the right to participate in a democracy. That’s why people join the army. It’s something we strongly believe in, ”said Tori Simenec, 28, of Minneapolis, a first lieutenant in the Marine Corps who served from 2016 to August 2020.
Mike Jason, 47, a retired U.S. Army colonel, recalled relying on voting by mail throughout a nearly three-decade career in which he voted by mail in his home state of Florida from positions outposts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Germany and a number of facilities.
After relying on mail-in ballots as his own lifeline for participation in American democracy until he retired from the Army last year, he found Trump’s attack on the integrity of mail-in voting to be infuriating.
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Watson reported from San Diego. Associated Press journalist Kevin Freking contributed to this report.
