The more President Trump raises concerns about the possibility of widespread mail-in voting problems including fraud in the November election, the more intent the mainstream media is on trying to debunk him by erroneously stating his concerns are unfounded and “unsubstantiated”:
At the same time, however, national news outlets like the Washington Post and the New York Times are also inadvertently proving his point by sounding alarm bells about problematic primaries in NYC that well over a month later still have not been decided – because of major problems with mail-in ballots.
Let’s take a look at what the Washington Post reported on July 25th:
From the story:
At the center of this mess is a massive influx of mail-in ballots — 403,000 returned ballots in the city this cycle vs. 23,000 that were returned and determined valid during the 2016 primary — and a system wholly unprepared to process them. It’s not just delayed results that are at issue: In the 12th district and in the primaries across the country, tens of thousands of mail-in ballots were invalidated for technicalities like a missing signature or a missing postmark on the envelope.[The 12th Congressional District Democratic primary] isn’t the only primary race in New York still up in the air. The 15th Congressional District in the Bronx, where New York City Council member Ritchie Torres holds a healthy lead, still hasn’t been called. Two other primaries in the Bronx and Westchester, won by Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones, were not decided for three weeks.[…]But the invalidation rate is concerning to many who are watching the race. According to data from the Board of Elections first published by The Intercept, up to 1 in 5 mail-in ballots were declared invalid before even being opened, based on mistakes with their exterior envelopes. The majority of mistakes are due to missing or late postmarks, and missing signatures. Preliminary numbers from the Board of Elections show an invalidation rate of 19 percent in both Manhattan and Queens and 28 percent in Brooklyn, just in this district. That rate, if applied to all of Brooklyn, would equate to 34,000 ballots thrown out, in a borough with the city’s largest population of black residents.
Here’s what the New York Times reported Monday in a piece with the headline “Why the Botched N.Y.C. Primary Has Become the November Nightmare”:
Election lawyers said one area of concern in New York City was that mail-in ballots have prepaid return envelopes. The Postal Service apparently had difficulty processing some of them correctly and, as a result, an unknown number of votes — perhaps thousands — may have been wrongfully disqualified because of a lack of a postmark.Thousands more ballots in the city were discarded by election officials for minor errors, or not even sent to voters until the day before the primary, making it all but impossible for the ballots to be returned in time.[…][NYC election officials] pointed out the difficulties in protecting election workers from the coronavirus, and cited state laws requiring the disqualification of ballots for various small errors — including missing signatures on ballot envelopes or envelopes sealed with tape — for contributing to the high number of invalidated ballots.Election officials also said the changing plans for the state’s presidential primary — it was initially canceled before being reinstated by the courts — had delayed the process of sending out absentee ballots.
On Monday, Manhattan Judge Analisa Torres ordered the state to count some of the mail-in ballots that were received without a postmark:
Judge Torres is an Obama appointee.
While no fraud has been alleged in the NYC primaries as of this writing, it’s very easy for one to see how the chaotic conditions on the ground there make it ripe for the very type of mail-in voter fraud Trump alleges could happen, especially in cities and states where virtually everything is controlled by Democrats.
Yesterday, Trump threatened to sue Nevada after the Democrat-controlled state legislature passed a bill Sunday that would automatically “allow all active voters to receive a mail-in ballot.” Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, signed the bill into law Monday.
As they say, stay tuned.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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