Attorney General William Barr Suggested People’s Ballots Could Be Stolen From Mailboxes (File)
Washington:
Attorney General William Barr attacked the use of postal ballots in the US election on Sunday, saying they could “open the doors to potential fraud”.
His comment, in an interview with Fox News, echoed President Donald Trump’s repeated assertions warning U.S. states, without evidence of significant past problems, against the use of postal ballots in the November elections.
At a time of “intense division in the country,” Barr said postal ballots could “open the floodgates of potential fraud” and undermine public confidence in the outcome of an election.
He suggested that people’s ballots could be stolen from mailboxes – or even that a foreign power could print “tens of thousands of counterfeit ballots” to influence the outcome.
Election experts are skeptical of such claims.
Many states and localities have been using postal ballots for years, with little evidence of more than isolated problems. And overseas Americans and military troops posted abroad voted by mail without complaining about fraud.
But this practice has come under scrutiny this year.
Voting and the virus
With the primary elections coming in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, polling stations in several states saw voters lining up for hours, in part because of social distancing.
The political impact of postal voting is not entirely clear.
There has been speculation that this may favor the Democrats, as some low-income voters may find it more difficult to get to the polls than wealthier Republicans. But postal ballots are also popular in some rural areas where Trump is strong.
Last month, a Stanford University study on the impact of postal voting in elections since 1996 concluded that this practice leads to a modest increase in the overall voter turnout, but “does not appear to increase the share of vote of both parties “.
The President’s harsh criticism gave a political twist to the debate.
In one of his all-important Twitter messages last month, Trump wrote that “VOTING BY MAIL WILL LEAD TO FRAUD AND ABUSE.
Barr’s defense of this argument has fueled new criticism that he has gone beyond the traditional role of an attorney general to serve, as some Democrats say, as the President’s personal advocate.
Arm the DOJ
Twitter last month twice took the rare step of warning readers of Trump’s mail-in vote messages, linked to a CNN article claiming the president’s allegations of fraud were unfounded .
Some Democrat critics have speculated that Trump, who warned before his surprise victory in the 2016 election that the vote could be “rigged,” would lay the groundwork for a legal battle in case he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
Biden leads in recent opinion polls, including in some key states, while Trump’s support has steadily waned amid criticism over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and racial tensions.
Vanita Gupta, former head of the civil rights division of the Justice Department and CEO of an advocacy group, said on Twitter that “Barr is putting up a weapon for the DOJ to contest a loss to Trump in November based on lies about legitimate voting methods. He should be charged. “
In fact, Trump himself voted by mail in the 2018 midterm elections, after changing his voter registration from New York to Florida.
(This story has not been edited by GalacticGaming staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
