President Trump suggested that the election could be delayed, questioning whether Americans can “properly, securely and safely vote” this year.
“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history,” Trump wrote in a Thursday tweet. “It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”
With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2020
Trump has repeatedly suggested on Twitter and in interviews that mail-in voting could be subject to fraud and has called the practice “one of the biggest risks I have.”
Trump’s likely Democratic opponent Joe Biden has suggested that Trump could try to delay the election. “Mark my words,” Biden said in April. “I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held.”
When Biden floated in April that Trump may try to delay the election, Trump said: “I never even thought of changing the date of the election. Why would I do that? Nov. 3. It’s a good number.”
Trump’s reelection campaign called the suggestion the “conspiracy theory ramblings” of a candidate “out of touch with reality.”
“Those are the incoherent, conspiracy theory ramblings of a lost candidate who is out of touch with reality,” Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said in a statement at the time. “President Trump has been clear that the election will happen on Nov. 3.”
The Trump campaign said the president was trying to highlight the problem with mail-in voting.
“The President is just raising a question about the chaos Democrats have created with their insistence on all mail-in voting,” said national press secretary for the Trump campaign Hogan Gidley. “They are using coronavirus as their means to try to institute universal mail-in voting, which means sending every registered voter a ballot whether they asked for one or not,” Gidley said. Voter rolls are notoriously full of bad addresses for people who have moved, are noncitizens, or are even deceased. Universal mail-in voting invites chaos and severe delays in results, as proven by the New York congressional primary, where we still don’t know who won after more than a month.”
The date of the presidential election is set by law and would require both houses of Congress to vote in favor of a change, making the president’s suggestion unlikely.
“The Congress may determine the Time of choosing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States,” the Constitution reads.
In an interview with Fox News this month, Trump declined to say if he would accept the results of the November election. Pressed to give a “direct answer,” Trump said he would “have to see.”
“No, I’m not going to just say, ‘Yes,'” the president said. “I’m not going to say, ‘No,’ and I didn’t last time either.”
The exchange came after Trump was asked if he was a gracious loser. Trump said he was not and speculated that “mail-in voting is going to rig the election.”
Democrats argue that voting by mail aids voter participation, notably with older voters. The Republican National Committee has also encouraged the practice.
In pre-recorded phone calls this year, Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, a top campaign adviser, and his son Donald Trump Jr., asked voters in a California special election to return their ballots “safely and securely” by mail.
Trump is trailing Biden in national polls.
