Study Disputes Trump’s Mail-In Ballot Claim: Campaign Update

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump says mail-in voting hurts Republican candidates because it enables fraud among other unspecified reasons, an assertion widely called false by fact-checkers.

Now yet another study disputes Trump’s claim that widespread mail-in voting would mean that “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

The study by Daniel M. Thompson, Jennifer Wu, Jesse Yoder and Andrew B. Hall of the Democracy & Polarization Lab at Stanford University found that there is no advantage to either Democrats or Republicans to expanded mail-in voting.

Looking at states that moved to vote-by-mail county by county, the researchers found that it didn’t affect either party’s share of either turnout or the vote and only modestly boosted average turnout rates.

Vote-by-mail “has no discernible effects on either partisan turnout or election outcomes. It is remarkably neutral in its partisan effects,” tweeted Hall.

Amash Says He’s Considering a White House Run (12:07 p.m.)

Justin Amash, a Michigan representative who left the Republican Party to become an independent, says he’s still considering a bid for the White House.

On Monday, after President Donald Trump claimed that a president’s “authority is total,” Amash wrote that “Americans who believe in limited government deserve another option.” When a supporter replied urging him to run, Amash tweeted: “Thanks. I am looking at it closely this week.”

On Wednesday, Amash’s campaign told ABC in a statement that he would make a decision “soon.”

Amash, a libertarian who is considered one of the more conservative members of Congress, left the GOP in July and voted for Trump’s impeachment. -- Emma Kinery

AOC Says She’s Not Yet Ready to Endorse Biden (11:11 a.m.)

Joe Biden won the backing of progressives Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren this week, but he’ll have to do a little more work to win over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

In an interview with Politico published Wednesday, the freshman representative from New York said she wants the presumptive Democratic nominee to “clarify” his positions on health care and the environment.

“We are having conversations with Biden’s team and we will see what some of these policy conversations are looking like,” she said.

Specifically, she wants to know more about Biden’s plans to help Puerto Rico, reform immigration and expand health care, calling his recent proposal to expand Medicare to Americans at age 60 inadequate. “I don’t think the vice president has a climate change policy that is sufficient,” she added. -- Erik Wasson

Coming Up:

Voting in Wyoming’s mail-in caucuses ends on April 17. Voting in Ohio mail-in primary ends on April 28.

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