With the COVID pandemic raging on, more and more people are interested in the option to vote by mail in the upcoming election.
Unfortunately, our president has decided to go on the attack, spreading blatant lies and misinformation about mail-in ballots. He’s already taken to Twitter to claim that it would be the worst thing to ever happen to democracy. He wrote,
“The United States cannot have all Mail-In Ballots. It will be the greatest Rigged Election in history. People grab them from mailboxes, print thousands of forgeries, and ‘force’ people to sign. Also, forge names. Some absentee OK, when necessary. Trying to use COVID for this Scam!”
Literally nothing that Trump wrote is true. For starters, mail-in ballots are nothing new. Every single state currently allows at least some of their population to vote by mail in the event of travel, sickness, or additional reasons they can’t vote in-person. Even before COVID, five states — Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington — already transitioned to all-mail elections where every single registered voter is sent a ballot. They can choose to vote-by-mail or vote in-person. Around 21 other states in total have laws allowing specific elections to be done entirely via mail.
Additionally, there is absolutely no proof of voter fraud through mail-in ballots. So much so that many Republicans even openly disagree with Trump. Studies show that voting by mail does not provide a partisan advantage for either side, it simply increases voter turnout.
Trump’s tweets on voting were so misleading and inaccurate that Twitter finally took the step of adding warnings, which included a message encouraging users to “get the facts” about voting by mail.
It’s clear that he’s merely fear-mongering. If he truly believed that voting by mail leads to voter fraud, then why would Trump vote by mail in 2017, 2018, and 2020?
At this point, it seems most likely that he’s concerned about his reelection odds and is already hedging his bets. If he loses the general election and a majority of the votes were cast by mail-in ballots, then he can falsely blame fraudulent voting — similar to what we saw him do when he lost the popular vote in 2016. Unfortunately for Trump, losing the general election in 2020 will be no one’s fault but his own.
Ok, so let’s recap: Mail-in ballots are secure, they’re legal, and they don’t favor a specific party.
To learn how to obtain a mail-in ballot in your state, head to Vote.org.
