Democrat FEC Commissioner Says There is ‘No basis’ for Trump Claims That Voting by Mail Leads to Fraud

Pointing to fact-checks from The Washington Post and CNN, as well as reports from other organizations about the effectiveness of the voting method, Federal Election Commission (FEC) commissioner Ellen Weintraub strongly hit back at claims from President Trump that mail-in voting leads to high levels of fraud.

In a more-than-60-tweet thread on the subject, Weintraub described the president’s claims as “dead wrong,” “crying wolf,” “false” and a “debunked lie.” She asserted that there is “no basis” for such allegations and that the falsehoods “may well undermine the American people’s faith in our democracy.”

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Buckle up.

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It’s been claimed that voting by mail leads to massive corruption and fraud. But what are the facts?

— Ellen L Weintraub (@EllenLWeintraub) May 28, 2020

Weintraub is a Democrat who was appointed during George W. Bush’s presidency and is one of three commissioners at the FEC. She has been a frequent Trump critic and appears on left wing cable news programs.

A colleague of Weintraub, Caroline Hunter, wrote a piece last year about her for Politico titled, “How My FEC Colleague Is Damaging the Agency and Misleading the Public.” Hunter said that “Commissioners are meant to be independent and neutral arbiters of campaign finance law.”

From the Hill:

She pointed to states that already hold elections entirely by mail and cited an analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice, among others, finding that “all types of voter fraud in U.S. elections are minuscule in comparison to the number of ballots cast.” 

Weintraub invoked polls displaying Americans’ growing support for mail-in ballots and linked to a study from the nonprofit Vote at Home that found 1 in 4 voters cast their votes via mailed-out ballots in the 2016 presidential election. 

“Parties are virtually equal in percentages of who votes by mail,” she added in one tweet, citing a blog post from an MIT political science professor. 

“Real fraud would be if U.S. citizens were deterred from voting and our government reflected the consent of fewer of the governed,” Weintraub said. “True leaders speak truth. Especially in an election season plagued by pandemic, economic uncertainty, and death, the American people deserve nothing less than the truth from our leaders.”