In light of the Trump administration taking some very radical steps to make its mark on the US Postal Service ahead of November 2020 elections, Donald Trump spent an early part of his Saturday morning retweeting and tweeting narratives that promote the baseless and untrue theory that mail-in voting is subjected to expansive fraud. Embedded within his unfounded claims was a statement alongside a story about voting fraud in Paterson, New Jersey, propounding the Democrats "know the 2020 election will be a fraudulent mess," further suggesting because of the alleged fraud, they "will maybe never know who won!"
The unfounded claims are surfacing amid Trump's relentless attack on the vote-by-mail elections, with the US Postal Service halting collection of its boxes off streets in Western states, limiting some voters' ability to send back mail-in ballots. Additionally, several news outlets have since reported the USPS has started reducing post office operating hours across several American states, along with its letter collection boxes.
In verified reporting via numerous esteemed news outlets, studies have concluded cases of mail-in voter fraud are insignificant. CNN proclaims while "rare instances of voter fraud from mail-in ballots do occur, it is nowhere near a widespread problem in the US election system," further establishing how mail ballot fraud is "exceedingly rare" because "states have systems and processes in place to prevent forgery, theft and voter fraud" that apply to both absentee ballots and mail-in ballots for in-state voters.
Additionally, the Washington Post has only found 372 cases of double voting or voting on behalf of a dead person in its analysis of 14.6 million votes cast across three U.S. states. The Hill puts the "fraud" myth to bed after it found 143 cases of criminal convictions involving absentee ballots over the course of 20 years. Those figures total only 0.00006% of the votes cast during that period.
With regards to the Paterson case Trump mentioned Saturday morning, officials tell the Washington Post such problems highlighted by the former reality TV star turned POTUS is not indicative of widespread fraud in the region and always revealed by election officials in a prompt manner. Scroll through to see how Americans across social media are reacting to the false allegations raised by Trump.