The US President has previously – at least publicly – claimed he wants to scrap mail-in ballots because, he claims, they are prone to fraud. But he just said the quiet bit out loud
Donald Trump just admitted why he really wants to get rid of postal voting in the US.
The US President has previously – at least publicly – claimed he wants to scrap mail-in ballots because, he claims, they are prone to fraud.
But in an interview with right-wing talk radio host Todd Starnes, he said the quiet bit out loud – and admitted doing so would help him rig the election.
“It’s the biggest thing we can do,” he said. “Bigger than the reapportionment. It’s the biggest thing we can do as a party.”
The “reapportionment” he referred to is Texas’ unprecedented redrawing of its electoral map mid-term to create five more winnable seats for Republicans.
That could be enough to let Trump keep control of congress, despite being the second most unpopular President in history (narrowly beaten by himself in his first term).
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Trump admitted on Friday that his recent interest in postal voting had been prompted by Vladimir Putin, who advised him to ban it.
Russian elections are among the most corrupt in the world – with last year’s re-election of Putin with a 90% landslide judged to be one of the most fraudulent in the nation’s history by independent monitors.
But Trump went on: “Our elections are extremely corrupt. The mail-in ballot system is seriously corrupt.”
This is untrue. While researchers accept postal voting is slightly more open to fraud than in-person voting, the evidence suggests it is exceptionally rare.
He also claimed, as he has before, that America is the only country that allows postal voting.
In fact, around 34 countries allowed some form of postal voting in 2024 – about half of the world’s democracies.
He then claimed he wouldn’t bother campaigning in a state that had postal voting, which he did, repeatedly during the 2024 campaign.
Then he confirmed again that his motivation for wanting to ban it was political.
“The democrats…the only way they’re going to win is with mail-in ballots, that’s the only way,” he said.
“I say we pick up 100 seats if we have real elections, meaning you go to the voters.”
He added: “The biggest thing Republicans can do is get rid of mail-in ballots.”
He also claimed he “would have won California” if mail-in voting had not been available.
This is, at best, implausible. Trump lost California by 3.2 million votes. To flip California he would have to either deter 3.2 million people from voting, or get them to flip – or most likely a good deal more than that, given about a quarter of Trump voters voted by mail.