President Donald Trump’s campaign against mail-in voting took a confusing turn on Friday, inadvertently revealing that he doesn’t understand what the process even is.
Even as the COVID-19 pandemic makes it dangerous to gather in public and definitely dangerous to vote in person, Trump fired off a mind-bending tweet railing against the safer option of mass mail-in voting, claiming that mail-in voting is wracked with fraud, but then decided “absentee ballots are fine because you have to go through a precise process to get your voting privilege.”
There’s one big problem with that: Absentee and mail-in ballots are the same thing.
Despite Trump’s claims, getting a ballot by mail — an absentee ballot, one might say — in most states requires filing an application complete with one’s signature. Five states have all-mail elections and haven’t faced any major issues or fraud throughout the years.
Check Trump’s tweets below:
….Absentee Ballots are fine because you have to go through a precise process to get your voting privilege. Not so with Mail-Ins. Rigged Election!!! 20% fraudulent ballots?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 10, 2020
How do you even respond to that?