President Donald Trump and his challenger, Joe Biden, have found something they agree on: The November election could be rife with corruption because of how officials handle the voting process.
Of course, the Republican incumbent and his Democratic rival place the prospective blame in different places. Each points at the other’s party.
“I really, really, really believe we’re on the cusp of what could be the most corrupt process that we’ve seen in a general election if we don’t monitor this every single second,” Biden told donors Tuesday evening as he discussed Trump’s and many Republicans’ opposition to expanding early voting and mail-in voting amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
That’s similar language to what Trump has tweeted to his millions of social media followers in recent weeks. “Mail-in voting … will lead to the most corrupt election in USA history,” Trump declared Sunday.
The president previously argued that mail-balloting allows voters to “cheat.” One such tweet drew a rare, special tag from Twitter that directed readers to mail-voting facts that rebutted the president’s unsupported claims about voter fraud.
There are instances of voter fraud in the U.S., most often found in local or smaller jurisdictional elections, but there is no evidence of widespread fraud that would tilt statewide or national results.
Biden noted Tuesday that Trump himself has voted using mail ballots, most recently using Florida’s absentee process to cast his Republican primary ballot in March.