Trump Says Mail-In Voting Is the Biggest Threat to Reelection

President Donald Trump arrives for an event at the White House in Washington on June 17, 2020. Alex Wong/Getty Images

President Donald Trump alleged that a surge mail-in voting is the most significant threat to his reelection prospects, according to an interview published Friday.

Over the past several months, the president has criticized proposals from Democrats and some Republicans to allow more people to vote via absentee ballot in the general election to avoid crowds of people during election day in an attempt to curb the spread of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Earlier this year, Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee filed lawsuits to rescind mail-in ballot expansion efforts pushed by Democrats.

“My biggest risk is that we don’t win lawsuits,” Trump told Politico when he was asked about voting by mail and the risk of fraud. “We have many lawsuits going all over. And if we don’t win those lawsuits, I think—I think it puts the election at risk.”

On Twitter, the president has repeatedly claimed that mail-in voting will lead to a significant amount of voter fraud.

“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!” Trump wrote last month, referring to COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP virus.

Michigan and Nevada earlier this year took steps in May to increase voting via mail, causing Trump to threaten to withhold federal funding.

“When you send out 7.7 million mail-in ballots, there’s forgeries, there’s frankly duplication where they print ballots on the same kind of paper with the same kind of machinery and you can’t tell the difference and then send in thousands and thousands of fake ballots,” Trump told reporters on May 20.

File photo of a voting booth in Lincoln, Neb., on April 14, 2020. Nati Harnik/AP Photo

Experts have said that voting by mail is more susceptible to fraud than voting in person.

According to a report published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “As with all forms of voter fraud, documented instances of fraud related to [voting by mail] are rare. However, even many scholars who argue that fraud is generally rare agree that fraud with [voting by mail] voting seems to be more frequent than with in-person voting.”

It added: “Two of the best-known cases of voter fraud involving absentee voting occurred in 1997 in Georgia and Miami. More recently, a political campaign manager within North Carolina’s ninth Congressional district defrauded voters by collecting unfilled ballots and then filled in the rest of it to favor the campaign’s candidate, leading to a new election.”

Trump, meanwhile, told the news outlet that he views likely Democratic nominee Joe Biden as a “weaker” candidate than his 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton. “I can tell you a lot about Hillary,” Trump said. “She had a lot of energy and she was smart.”

The president said that Biden’s low-key presidential campaign won’t hold up, accusing the former vice president’s campaign of shielding him from public scrutiny.

“We haven’t really seen the real Joe because they have him—they’re hiding him,” he told Politico.