Nearly two-thirds favor voting by mail, but wide partisan divide: poll

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Chris Wallace on mail-in ballots and voter fraud

‘Fox News Sunday’ anchor Chris Wallace joins ‘America’s Newsroom.’

As President Trump continues his full-court press this holiday weekend against states moving to expand voting by mail, a new national poll indicates that by a more than 2-to-1 margin Americans favor allowing balloting through the mail in November’s general election due to health concerns amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Sixty-three percent of those questioned in the latest Fox News Poll released last week said they support allowing all U.S. citizens to vote by mail in the upcoming presidential election due to the concerns over the coronavirus, with 30 percent opposed.

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But there’s a wide partisan divide on the question.

Eighty-three percent of Democrats favor voting by mail. A majority of independents – 60 percent – agree. But only 42 percent of Republicans support voting by mail this November, with 51 percent opposed.

The poll, conducted May 17-20, indicated that 48 percent say they’ll vote in person at a polling station this November. But that’s down from the 65 percent who said they usually vote in person on Election Day.

Thirty-five percent said they will likely vote by mail or absentee ballot this November, a spike from the 19 percent who said they normally vote by mail or absentee ballot.

FOX NEWS POLL INDICATES BIDEN WITH ADVANTAGE ON HANDLING CORNAVIRUS BUT TRUMP WITH EDGE ON ECONOMY

The president took to Twitter twice on Sunday to blast moves to make it easier to vote by mail in November.

“The United States cannot have all Mail In Ballots. It will be the greatest Rigged Election in history. People grab them from mailboxes, print thousands of forgeries and 'force' people to sign. Also, forge names. Some absentee OK, when necessary. Trying to use Covid for this Scam!,” Trump tweeted Sunday morning without citing specific evidence.

And Sunday evening the president claimed that “The Democrats are trying to Rig the 2020 Election, plain and simple!”

The president and the GOP have railed against recent attempts by Democrats to increase voting by mail, arguing that it increases voter fraud. And the Republican National Committee and the Trump reelection campaign – as litigation spreads across crucial general election battleground states – have doubled their legal budget this year to hit back at efforts by Democrats to overhaul voting laws in response to the pandemic.

Most recently, Republican National Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee and California Republican Party sued Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state's Secretary of State Alex Padilla on Sunday, claiming an executive order sending mail-in ballots to all registered voters in the state is an "illegal power grab" that invites potential fraud.

Democrats, pushing back against the claims by Trump and the GOP, say that cases of actual voter fraud are limited and claim that Republicans are trying to suppress voter turnout to improve their chances of winning elections.