As the election gets closer you will be hearing a lot about this. That is because Donald Trump has been speaking about this issue all the time saying it is not possible to have a fair election if there are postal votes. He does add one exception to that – he will not win Florida without postal votes of the elderly so he has said that postal voting in Florida is fine.
The important thing to remember, when you hear about all of this in the future, and he Russians are already spreading fake news about it, as they did in the 2016 election, is that Americans have been allowed to vote by post forever. In fact, it is quite routine for up to one-third of all votes, including when Trump won in 2016, to be via post. It is not unusual, it is not strange and Trump’s own appointees will confirm this. His Postmaster General, appointed by Trump, has said the Post Office can deal with all the votes even though Trump says they can’t. His FBI director has said that they have had no evidence, now or in the past, of any significant fraudulent voting via post. In other words, what we are getting prepared to hear, with Russian assistance, is a fake story about fraudulent voting via post. There is simply no evidence of it and it is the way things have always been. Just remember that when this becomes a big issue in the first week of November. Obviously, in a year with Covid-19 there will be far more postal voters than ever before, but what really appears to lie behind it is that President Trump feels that if more people vote he is likely to lose and if less people vote he has a winning chance. For now, he is way behind in all the polls losing by between 6% to 8%.
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