President Donald Trump continued on Monday to sow unfounded doubt about mail-in voting ahead of the midterm elections, despite encouraging Republicans to vote any way they can.
Trump’s remarks came amid a meeting at the White House with the 2020 election denier Tina Peters on Monday, sources confirmed to ABC News. Peters, the former county clerk of Mesa County, Colorado, was convicted on state charges in a scheme to breach the state’s voting systems as she hunted for evidence of election fraud in 2020.
The state’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, earlier this year granted Peters clemency following repeated calls from the president urging the state to let her go. Peters was released from prison in June.
During a gaggle on the White House South Lawn en route to Nebraska on Monday, where he attended a political rally, Trump pushed back when asked why he was telling Republicans to vote by mail despite his repeated assertions that it is fraudulent.
“No, vote by mail or vote in person. I’d rather have a vote in person. But they can vote by mail if they want, because we seem to have no choice,” Trump said, going on to claim, without providing evidence, that mail-in voting is rife with cheating.
“What we’re concerned about is there seems to be a lot of- not seems to be, there is a lot of cheating in vote by mail,” Trump said, adding a directive to reporters that they need to examine elections in California.
“Trump is lying about California again,” Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office said back in June after Trump made baseless accusations of fraud in the state’s primary election.
Trump has encouraged voters to cast their ballots by mail ahead of the critical midterm cycle, which will determine control of Congress and, ultimately, the direction of his final two years as president.
“Vote early, vote by mail or vote in person on Election Day, November 3rd, so we can defeat the radical left Dumocrats in a midterm victory that is too big to rig,” Trump said in a video posted to his social media on October 3.
Trump has voted by mail twice in Florida elections this year, including in the state’s recent primary election. He’s also voted early in elections while he was in office, including during the Florida Republican primary in 2024.
His administration this year has been involved in legal challenges to mail-in ballot rules, including the filing last month of an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to immediately implement new U.S. Postal Service mail ballot rules for November. The Supreme Court rejected that appeal, clearing the way for states to continue sending out mail-in ballots as planned ahead of the midterms.
Trump seized on Monday upon an incident in Maricopa County, Arizona, where officials said Sunday that a contractor accidentally mailed 3,126 early ballots six days before they were supposed to be sent out.
In a statement, the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office said no voters were adversely affected and “upon consultation with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, it was determined that the ballots remain valid and do not need to be voided or reissued.”
Still, the president, who was responding to a reporter’s question, said that the country should “be ashamed of themselves.”
“So Maricopa just sent out thousands of ballots in error. Maricopa County in Arizona. And they have to be ashamed of themselves,” Trump said.
“By the way, there were no errors. You know that, right?” he said.
He added: “Maricopa is a very, very dishonest county.”
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