Because of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, many states are moving to mail-in voting for the November general election. There have been concerns about voter fraud for a multitude of reasons, including ballots being lost in the mail, people voting for others and ballot harvesting taking place.
"The bipartisan commission chaired by Jimmy Carter and James Baker said back in 2009 that mail-in voting is fraud, with the risk of fraud and coercion," Barr said. "Since that time, there have been – in the newspapers, in networks, academic studies – saying it is open to fraud and coercion. The only time the narrative changed is after this administration came in."
According to the attorney general, there have been numerous elections that had serious instances of fraud.
"For example, we indicted someone in Texas, 1,700 ballots collected from people who could vote, he made them out and voted for the person he wanted," Barr explained. "That kind of thing happens with mail-in ballots."
Blitzer made the argument that there hasn't been "widespread" fraud with voting by mail. The attorney general, however, reminded him that there has never been a time when so many Americans were voting by mail instead of in-person than they will this November.
"We haven't had the kind of widespread use of mail-in ballots as being proposed. We've had absentee ballots from people who request them from a specific address. Now, what we're talking about is mailing them out to everyone on the voter list, when everyone knows those voter lists are inaccurate," he explained. "People who would get them don't get them, which has been one of the major complaints in states that have tried this in municipal elections. And people who get them aren't the right people. They're people who have replaced the previous occupant and they can make them out. Sometimes multiple ballots come to the same address, with several generations of occupants."
"Do you think that's a way to run a vote?" Barr asked rhetorically.
Blitzer made the remark that some states only conduct voting by mail, including some Republican states. Barr, however, sees this as "playing with fire."
"We're a very divided country here and people have to have confidence in the election and the legitimacy of the government, and people trying to change the rules to this methodology, as a matter of logic, is very open to fraud and coercion, is reckless and dangerous and is playing with fire," the attorney general said.
Barr brings up valid concerns. In fact, just recently a Democratic operative admitted to rigging elections in the northeast. He even went so far as to train 20 or so other people to do the same thing in states that have lax voter laws, including Pennsylvania, which is a swing state. It's probably why 20 percent of New Jersey's mail-in elections were plagued with fraud.
A reporter conducted an experiment to see how many ballots would get lost in the mail. Not surprisingly, three percent of all ballots mailed magically disappeared. And then there's the issue of voters receiving multiple ballots, like what happened to a former Fox News correspondent. It's because of these concerns that the Republican National Committee has filed lawsuits in various states, like Nevada, where election officials have completely upended their entire election protocol.
Attorney General Barr on universal mail-in voting: “this is playing with fire…very open to fraud and coercion” pic.twitter.com/8LvkOKWpxI
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) September 2, 2020