Political battle escalates over push to increase voting-by-mail amid coronavirus pandemic

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Trump: 'I think that mail-in voting is a terrible thing'

Raw video: President Trump responds to question about mail-in voting at daily White House coronavirus task force briefing.

President Trump is turning up the volume in his opposition to expanding voting by mail and absentee ballots as a way to minimize health risks posed by voting in-person during the coronavirus pandemic.

"Mail-in voting is horrible. It's corrupt," the president argued during Tuesday’s daily Coronavirus Task Force press briefing at the White House.

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Trump then suggested that “you get thousands and thousands of people sitting in someone's living room signing ballots all over the place…I think that mail-in voting is a terrible thing.” The president didn’t offer any evidence to back up his claim that voting by mail is rampant with fraud and abuse.

The president’s comments follow a similar attack on voting by mail at Friday’s briefing, when he charged that “a lot of people cheat with mail-in voting.”

“It shouldn’t be mail-in voting," Trump added. "It should be: you go to a booth and you proudly display yourself. You don’t send it in the mail where people can pick up. All sorts of bad things can happen … by the time it gets in and is tabulated."

The charges by the president are his latest claims -- disputed by critics and opponents -- regarding voter fraud, which he insists kept him from winning the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election. While Trump crushed Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College vote to win the White House, the Democratic nominee topped Trump by nearly 3 million votes in the national popular count.

When a reporter pointed out on Tuesday that the president voted by mail in Florida’s primary election last month, Trump responded saying, “Sure. I can vote by mail…. Because I’m allowed to."

“I happened to be at the White House” the president said, explaining that he wasn’t able to go to Florida – where he’s registered to vote – to cast a ballot in person.

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The president argued that “there’s a big difference between somebody’s that out-of-state and does a ballot and everything’s sealed, certified, and everything else” and the increasingly popular use of mail-in voting and absentee balloting for voters who are not out of state. “There’s a lot of dishonesty going along with mail-in voting,” Trump said.

Five states – Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington – vote entirely by mail. At least 16 other states allow more limited forms of voting by mail.

With the coronavirus outbreak forcing social distancing and keeping most Americans in their homes in hopes of preventing a spread of the virus that causes the deadly COVID-19 disease, the Democratic presidential nomination calendar has been upended, with many states delaying their remaining primary elections or transforming them nearly entirely to voting by mail and absentee balloting.

Among the states moving to the vote-by-mail option is Ohio. The state’s in-person voting – which was scheduled for March 17 – was scrapped at the last minute due to coronavirus health concerns.

Under a bill passed by the state’s legislature and signed into law by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, postcards are being sent to every registered voter to explain how they can obtain a vote-by-mail application. Ballots must be postmarked by April 27 to be counted. The state will allow an extremely limited group of people – mostly disabled voters – to cast a ballot in person on April 28.

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But this week in Wisconsin, the state’s conservative-dominated Supreme Court squashed a primary eve move by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers to delay in-person voting in Tuesday’s election and move to absentee balloting due to grave coronavirus health concerns.

Separately, the Republican-nominated justices on the U.S. Supreme Court won out over the Democratic-nominated justices in a 5-4 ruling Monday evening, preventing a one-week extension of voting by mail in Wisconsin’s primary.

The partisan fight in Wisconsin the past few days is an initial skirmish in the broader battle between Democrats and Republicans over expanding voting by mail for November’s general election.

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Former Vice President Joe Biden – in an MSNBC interview last week -- predicted “there’s going to be a great deal more absentee balloting” in the general election. And on Tuesday the all-but-certain Democratic presidential nominee emphasized in a “Today” show appearance that it’s time to start looking into what it “would take to have voting by mail.”

The $2 trillion economic stimulus package passed by Congress and signed into law by the president two weeks ago – which aims to help workers, small businesses and large companies devastated by the shutdown of much of the nation’s economy due to the pandemic, as well as provide aid to hospitals on the front lines in the crisis – also included $400 million to help states move toward mail-in voting.

Senate Democrats had pushed for $2 billion in election funding, with House Democrats angling for double that amount. Congressional Democrats say they’ll work to increase funding in the next stimulus package.

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A study from the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice released last month spotlighted sweeping changes to current voting practices across the country – such as universal mail-in voting, ballot drive-by drop off boxes from coast to coast, and easier online voter registration – to make voting in November safe. Their price tag to implement the changes was $2 billion.

The push by Democrats will face plenty of opposition from the president and Republicans, who’ve long opposed moves to expand voting by mail and early voting by arguing that it invites voter fraud abuse. Democrats – pushing back on such arguments – 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.

Trump on Wednesday took to Twitter to emphasize that “Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to state wide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it. Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans.”

Last week the president claimed during a "Fox & Friends" appearance that a vote-by-mail proposal by House Democrats would have ensured no Republicans would ever be elected again.

Biden called the argument by Trump “absolutely ridiculous.”

Republican National Committee chair Ronna Romney McDaniel – in an opinion piece Monday for Fox News – claimed that “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and former Vice President Joe Biden say we must throw election integrity to the wayside in favor of an all-mail election, fundamentally changing how Americans vote in eight months. The overhaul would vastly expand opportunities for fraud and weaken confidence in our elections, but all Washington Democrats see is a potential benefit for their party.”