Universal mail ballots present a “catastrophic problem” for the presidential election, White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller warned Friday.
In an interview on “Fox & Friends,” Miller explained why President Trump brought the issue to the nation’s attention on Thursday.
“This is shocking for your audience to consider: No one who submits a ballot has their identity confirmed. No one verifies if they are US citizens. Think about it,” he advised.
TRUMP DEFENDS TWEET ON POSSIBLE ELECTION DAY DELAY AT CONTENT PRESS CONFERENCE
“Any foreign citizen, talk about foreign election interference, can mail a ballot and no one even checks to see if they are a citizen of the United States of America,” said Miller.
According to Miller, that interference could be occurring on “a scale of potentially millions of people.” He said Democrats have come up with a “crazy” plan for voting by mail in the House-passed HEROES Act, “which prohibits voter identification as part of any vote-by-mail.”
However, the risk of ballot fraud is generally rare. In 2017, the Brennan Center for Justice rated that risk at infinitesimal 0.00004 percent to 0.0009 percent, according to studies of past elections.
Additionally, proponents of voting by mail argue that the process would be subject to various degrees of verification, as would absentee ballots.
During a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Attorney General William Barr told members of Congress that “he had no reason to think” that the upcoming elections will be “rigged”, but that it was “common sense” to think that foreign entities would. try.
In a Thursday tweet reflecting Miller’s rhetoric, the president wrote that the vote by mail “is already proving to be a catastrophic disaster.”
“Even the test areas are a long way off. Democrats talk about foreign influence in voting, but they know that voting by mail is an easy way for foreign countries to enter the race. Even beyond that, there is no an exact count! ” he exclaimed.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, more Americans than ever are expected to issue mail ballots this year, surely presenting challenges, but election officials say there is still little evidence to back up these claims.
That said, Miller told “Friends” hosts that foreign actors weren’t the only thing the administration was concerned about before November 3, 2020.
“In fact, in the Democrats’ HEROES Act, the bill that was supposed to be for the relief of the coronavirus, actually has a provision that prohibits the identification of voters as part of any mail ballot,” he added. “That’s crazy”.
Miller also criticized former President Barack Obama’s speech on Thursday for civil rights icon John Lewis, an advocate of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act.
In his speech, Obama warned the American people about how “those in power” were “doing everything possible to discourage people from voting” by closing polling places, using restrictive identification laws, undermining the Service Postcard from the United States and “attack our voting rights with surgical precision.”
Miller said Obama’s speech was “totally disconnected from reality” and “outrageously” and “outrageously” false.
“How can anyone claim that it is repression of voters to ask if someone who votes, if John Smith is really John Smith?” I ask.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP
“Americans have to present [an] Identification to do all kinds of basic functions. To think that you would not have to present identification to vote in an election … It is a simple principle: one citizen, one vote, “said Miller.
“[With] emphasis on the word ‘citizen’. “
