A Vote-by-mail fraud case in New Jersey has caught the attention of President Donald Trump who has been trying to discredit the method of voting for the upcoming elections.
What We Know:
- With the upcoming elections on November, President Trump has cast an all out criticism against the Vote-By-Mail by labeling it a fraudulent practice. On Sunday, he tweeted about a past voting fraud case that happened in New Jersey to spark up criticism about the voting method.
- It was the first time elections in New Jersey were conducted entirely by the vote-by-mail method because of the Covid-19 pandemic. On May 7th, a day before the New Jersey elections, a U.S postal employee spotted 347 mail in ballots in a mailbox in Paterson, New Jersey, bundled together. The suspects that were later apprehended were Paterson City Councilman Micheal Jackson, Councilman-elect Alex Mendez and two other men who were charged for voting fraud and tampering with public records. Jackson and Mendez had more than three mail-in ballots that were not theirs and did not identify themselves as the Bearer’s. The “Bearer” is allowed to take ballots from several people and deliver them to the county board of elections. She or He can collect and deliver ballots for only three people and a candidate in the election is never permitted to be a bearer.
- The Passaic County Board of Elections rejected 3,190 ballots, about 19% of the mail in ballots submitted, but not all of the ballots were fraudulent.
- President Donald Trump has taken advantage of the New Jersey vote-by-mail fraud case and used it for his own political purpose. He has been declaring statements about how the vote-by-mail will be rigged for the upcoming November elections. On Sunday afternoon, he wrote on his Twitter account: “The 2020 Election will be totally rigged if Mail-In Voting is allowed to take place, & everyone knows it. So much time is taken talking about foreign influence, but the same people wont even discuss Mail-In election corruption. Look at Patterson, N.J 20% of vote was corrupted!”
- People involved in the Paterson vote-by-mail fraud case have said that President Trump is exaggerating what took place in the municipal elections. They argue that the case can be used to illustrate what could go wrong with mail ballots and how attempts on fraud can be caught. “This is a case study in what could go wrong. But we know from experience and from other towns, the chances of everything going this wrong are so slim that they just don’t happen anywhere else,” said Scott Salmon, Lawyer of William McKoy, incumbent of the Paterson City Council, to The Washington Post.
- According to the Board of Election, nearly 1,400 out of the 3,274 ballots thrown out were rejected because the voter’s signature did not match one held on file. Approximately 900 votes found at post offices were disqualified because the portion of the ballot for designating a “bearer” was improperly completed.
“It is impossible to carry out the kind of widespread fraud trump insists is possible”, said University of California professor Richard Hansen for an NPR report.“Even on this small scale, what you see is that having a conspiracy like this to try to affect the outcome of an election is very difficult to do without detection”.
The popularity of the vote-by-mail method has increased because of the upcoming elections and the Covid-19 increasing numbers. According to a CNN/SSRS polling from Arizona, Florida and Michigan 40% of voters will vote by mail.
