Debate over mail-in voting heats up
WASHINGTON (SBG) — President Donald Trump is making the way we vote a key issue ahead of the November election.
"When you do all mail-in voting, ballots, you're asking for fraud. People steal them out of mailboxes. People print them and then they sign them, and they give them in," Trump claimed recently.
The president also tweeted, "Mail-in ballots will be printed by foreign countries and others. It will be the scandal of our times!"
He's made this assessments as some statewide primaries have proven messy.
In Maryland, top lawmakers have called for an investigation after 75,000 counted ballots disappeared and hundreds of voters who requested absentee ballots but never received them.
In Paterson, New Jersey 19% percent of votes submitted were disqualified, with reports of close results plagued by claims of fraud.
Some critics are sounding alarm bells about what could happen if more Americans voted by mail.
“That makes them susceptible to being stolen, forged altered but it also makes voters susceptible to intimidation and pressure at their homes," said Hans von Spakovsky, the Manger of the Election Law Reform Initiative at The Heritage Foundation.
But election officials say there are extra layers of security built in.
Even if someone takes your ballot from your mailbox fills it out and sends it back, the signature has to match the signature on file and if it doesn’t, the voter is contacted and this ballot won't be counted.
“It has been very successful in the state of Washington, strong bipartisan support and the voters love it," said Sam Reed, in an interview Wednesday. Reed is a Republican and the former Secretary of State in Washington State. which has been using vote-by-mail only since 2005.
He said this year in particular would be a great time for other states to switch over.
“You don’t have those hours of waiting in line and particularly this year you have poll workers who tend to be more elderly are not likely to want to serve and be exposed," Reed said.
Leaders in both parties now working to expand vote by mail, in part to prevent scenes like this from occurring in November.
In response to some of the president’s posts against mail-in-voting, the Biden campaign announced it’s sent letters to Twitter and Facebook "demanding this disinformation, which seeks to undermine faith in our electoral process" gets taken down immediately.
