Trump: Dems “Using COVID to Steal an Election”

Colin A. Young

President Donald Trump on Monday directly accused Democrats of exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to “steal an election” through the widespread use of mail-in voting. During a roughly 50-minute speech at the Republican National Convention just after noon Monday, Trump said that vote-by-mail for the presidential election is “going to be one of the greatest scams” in the history of world politics.

“They’re gonna mail out 80 million ballots. It’s impossible, they have no idea. Who’s mailing them? Mostly Democrat states and Democrat governors. Well, supposing they don’t mail them to Republican neighborhoods. That means they’re not going to get them, so they’re going to complain and the election is going to be over and then they’re going to complain and then they’ll say, ‘oh, well, we didn’t get it, big deal.’ In the meantime, you might lose the election,” Trump said. “This is the greatest scam in the history of politics, I think, and I’m talking about beyond our nation. And they act like they’re aggrieved, like by saying this we’re saying such a horrible thing, we’re not patriotic by saying this. No, we voted during World War One. We voted at the voting booth during World War Two. The pandemic, we’re doing very well and people know how to handle it — look at the crowds — they’re doing very well. It’s very safe, it’s going to be very safe.”

At another point, Trump said, “What they’re doing is using COVID to steal an election.” The president, who votes through the mail by absentee ballot, said voting that way is acceptable. “If you have an absentee ballot where you request it, we’re all in favor of that. Absentee, like in Florida. Absentee is good. But other than that, they’re very, very bad,” he said.

In Massachusetts, registered voters were sent an application they could return to request that elections officials send them a ballot by mail. With the exception of being mailed a form to request a ballot and not needing an excuse, voting by mail in Massachusetts this year is essentially the same as voting by absentee ballot.