Aaron Rupar writing in Vox:
‘…The idea of more states moving toward a mail-in system ahead of November’s election is gaining steam amid the coronavirus pandemic. The dilemma Wisconsin voters faced on Tuesday between staying safe at home or heading to polling places to vote is one most states are interested in helping their citizens avoid. Trump, however, has other, more self-interested concerns.
Not only is the president leading Republican efforts to prevent federal funds from being used for mail-in efforts, but the briefing on Wednesday revealed he really doesn’t have any good reasons for his position.
Trump was pressed on the point during the White House coronavirus task force briefing by CNN’s Jim Acosta. Acosta referenced claims the president made the day before about why he thinks mail-in voting is bad — “You get thousands and thousands of people sitting in somebody’s living room, signing ballots all over the place,” Trump said — and asked him to back it up.
“I think there is a lot of evidence, but we’ll provide you with some. There’s evidence that’s being compiled just like it’s being compiled in the state of California, where they settled with Judicial Watch saying that a million people should not have been voting. You saw that? I am telling you, in California, in the great state of California, they settled and we could’ve gone a lot further. Judicial Watch settled where they agreed that a million people should not have voted, where they were 115 years old and lots of things and people were voting in their place.”
…Judicial Watch is a right-wing nonprofit led by staunch Trump loyalist Tom Fitton. The settlement Trump referred to is a January 2019 agreement between the organization and Los Angeles County that required the county to remove inactive registrations from the voter rolls. By definition, these people hadn’t voted — that’s why their registrations were inactive. Yet Trump has somehow spun this into an unfounded claim about a million people casting illegal ballots….’
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