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Despite the MSM’s insistence that Republicans are making “unsubstantiated” claims about how mail-in voting opens the door to potential widespread voting problems including fraud, the claims most certainly have been substantiated, as my colleagues and I have previously documented with receipts.
Case in point: New York City’s chaotic June 23rd primaries, some of which have yet to be decided because of massive problems with mail-in ballots, including thousands that were either missing postmarks or that were postmarked after the primary.
On Monday, an Obama-appointed Manhattan judge ruled that some of those previously rejected ballots must be counted:
A judge orders New York’s boards of elections to immediately begin counting many ballots that came in without postmarks pic.twitter.com/fyajGD07bx
— Bill Mahoney (@mahoneyw) August 4, 2020
Former President Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer weighed in this morning on mail-in voting, and used the NYC example to make a point about how even if you don’t believe mail-in voting is ripe for fraud (which he doesn’t) states that are either dipping their toes in the mail-in voting water or that are diving in full steam ahead still shouldn’t be experimenting with it so close to an election when so many agencies are unprepared and understaffed:
12 states will attempt new voting procedures in 2020. All are risking doing harm to the integrity of the election if things go wrong, as they did in the June NY primary, where the surge in mail voting led to 25% of the ballots being rejected in one race. The normal rate is 1%.
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) August 5, 2020
CA, DC, VT and NV will for the first time mail actual ballots to all voters. It took WA years to do this right. These 4 states are rushing to get it done. It is fraught with risk, especially if an election is close and ballot harvesting is allowed.
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) August 5, 2020
No state previously mailed absentee ballot applications to all voters in a general election. This year, DE, IL, MD, MA, MI, WI, IA, and OH will try it. It’s what NY tried in the June primary, overwhelming an unprepared system. These 8 states should NOT do this.
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) August 5, 2020
In-person primary elections took place yesterday in KS and MI. In person can be done safely &successfully. Historically, ballots are rejected 3 times as often in the mail compared to in-person. If mail voting surges and states aren’t ready, it will lead to bitter acrimony in Nov.
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) August 5, 2020
The lesson: These 12 states should not try to accomplish something in 2020 that they can’t successfully do.
Reporters should dig deeply into these 12 states to see if they can pull this off. Before it’s too late.
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) August 5, 2020
Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume agrees:
Thread: Ari is on to something. A presidential election with all the downballot races that entails is no time for experminents. https://t.co/v4i1dfOchL
— Brit Hume (@brithume) August 5, 2020
My colleague Nick Arama summed things up accordingly yesterday by noting just how all of this is a “recipe for disaster”:
It just vastly increases the possibility of being disenfranchised if this were done on a massive scale. It’s one thing if there are a few requested absentee ballots. It’s another whole thing again if ballots are just sent to anyone who is registered. You have the problem of people being dead, moved, incapacitated, and or the possibility of someone voting in their place. Then you have the question does the voter get it in time, a problem in New York. Then does it make it there in time to count. And those are just a few of the problems.
Yep. And you can best believe that if we see widescale problems in the immediate aftermath of the presidential election, Democrats and the media are going to be screaming from the rooftops about voter disenfranchisement, all while conveniently ignoring the fact that the problems were of their own making.
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