On Friday, President Donald Trump pointed to the chaotic primary election in New York’s 12th Congressional District as a portent of what the nation might expect should Democrats succeed in their scheme to vastly expand mail-in voting for the general election in November. Though the primary was held on June 23, a clear winner is not known due to a large number of absentee ballots that were disqualified by the state’s Board of Elections.
“They’re never going to have the result of that election — never the correct result,” Trump said. “Thousands and thousands of ballots are missing.”
The president fears that a nationwide mail-in vote could be even worse than the fiasco in New York 12. He told reporters that results could be seriously delayed if a massive mail-in vote scheme is thrust upon an unprepared nation.
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“You won’t know the election results for weeks, months, maybe years after,” Trump said. “Maybe you’ll never know the election results, and that’s what I’m concerned with. It’ll be fixed, it’ll be rigged. This will be catastrophic for our nation.”
Roughly one in five mail-in ballots in New York 12 were invalidated for a variety of reasons such as late post-marks, missing signatures, or improperly sealed envelopes. New York 12 covers portions of Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn. The Brooklyn portion of the district was hit especially hard as nearly 28 percent of those ballots were invalidated.
At stake in New York 12 is the Democrat congressional nominee in the general election. Since New York 12 is an overwhelmingly Democrat district, the primary winner is virtually assured a seat in the House of Representatives. Currently, 14 term incumbent Carolyn B. Maloney holds a 3,700 vote advantage over attorney Suraj Patel, a former Obama campaign staffer.
Patel claims thousands of voters never received ballots and that close to 25 percent of those who did had their votes invalidated on technicalities such as late or missing post-marks.
The system — at least in New York — is not designed to handle a large number of mail-in votes according to John Conklin, a spokesman for the New York Board of Elections. Conklin said that the “astronomically high number of absentee ballots” overwhelmed the system.
“The system is built to process 3-5 percent of the election in absentee ballots, not 40-60 percent of the election,” Conklin said. “[It’s] not possible to change this process overnight.”
Nevertheless, changing the system “overnight” is exactly what Democrats — led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — wish to do. On Friday, Pelosi accused the president of attempting to suppress the vote with his criticism of the mail-in method.
“The reason [Trump] does it is because the more people hear something like that, the more they’re discouraged to vote,” Pelosi told CNN. “It’s a way to suppress the vote.”
Perhaps just to goad Democrats and the media, the president tweeted on Thursday that it might be a good idea to delay the general election in November. “With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”
Pelosi used the occasion of Representative John Lewis’ funeral to blast the president for the remark: “At the same time we are burying a hero of voting rights, he goes out and says something beneath the dignity of the White House. But he does that almost every day, beneath the dignity of the presidency.”
Of course, Trump does not have the authority to delay the national election and never claimed that he did. But Democrats cannot help but fall for his bait every time.
Besides, Pelosi and her Democrat colleagues already know that universal mail-in voting will cause chaos; they’re hoping for it, actually. A hung election creates opportunities for legal challenges and court battles, which they hope to use to regain the presidency and perhaps control of the Senate as well.
President Trump laid out one possible scenario for reporters: “You guys like to talk about Russia and China and other places — they’ll be able to forge ballots, they’ll do whatever they have to do … and [Democrats] are using COVID, you know, they’re using the China virus. China must be very happy about it, because they hit us with a virus, and now they screw up an election like you will never see.”
Photo: mstahlphoto/iStock/Getty Images Plus
James Murphy is a freelance journalist who writes on a variety of subjects. He can be reached at [email protected].
