Trump Will Judge Election Fairness After Vote, White House Says
Trump Will Judge Election Fairness After Vote, White House Says
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump remains concerned over what he considers voter fraud and will wait until after the November election to judge whether the results were fair, White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said.
“He’ll see what happens and make a determination in the aftermath,” McEnany said Wednesday at a White House briefing. “He wants confidence in the elections.”
Trump has repeatedly warned, without citing evidence, that the November election would be “rigged” if voters are permitted to mail in their ballots instead of going to polling places, where they risk exposure to coronavirus.
The president has lashed out at the U.S. Postal Service, noting the role it would play in facilitating mail-in voting. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy this week retreated from operational changes that were viewed by Democrats as a politically-driven campaign to hobble the Post Office before the election.
Trump has most recently gone after drop boxes that states tout as a safer alternative to voting in person during the pandemic. But Trump argued that voters should not trust them because they don’t know who collects the ballots or “what might be done to them prior to tabulation.”
The Trump campaign is suing to limit the use of drop boxes in Pennsylvania, arguing that ones placed in nursing homes, college campuses and fire stations in a recent primary were “unmonitored and/or unsecured” and were not equitably distributed.
According to research by the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least 24 states and Washington, D.C., have drop boxes that can be used in November -- including the battleground states of Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- enough to tip a close election in the Electoral College.
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