United States President Donald Trump on Thursday suggested that the 2020 presidential elections in November be delayed, citing concerns of the coronavirus and fraudulent voting.
“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history,” Trump said in a tweet. “It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”
Trump has often criticised mail-in voting, or postal voting, in the past but hasn’t provided any proof of fraud so far.
Mail-in voting was “proving to be a catastrophic disaster”, Trump said in a series of tweets. “Even testing areas are way off. The Dems [Democratic Party politicians] talk of foreign influence in voting, but they know that Mail-In Voting is an easy way for foreign countries to enter the race. Even beyond that, there’s no accurate count!”
He also claimed that main-in voting in New York was in a disastrous state. “Votes from many weeks ago are missing – a total mess,” he claimed. “They have no idea what is going on. Rigged Election. I told you so. Same thing would happen, but on massive scale, with USA. Fake News refuses to report!”
At least six states in the US have planned to hold “all mail” elections in November, according to BBC. California, Utah, Hawaii, Colorado, Oregon and Washington will send postal ballots to registered voters. They will then fill it in and send them back or drop it off on election day. Half the states in the US permit any voter to vote by post on request.
There has been no evidence of widespread fraud in this form of voting despite several studies over the years, the report added.
The United States has been affected the worst by the coronavirus pandemic. There are currently 44,28,896 infections and 1,50,733 deaths due to Covid-19 in the US.
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