Trump says ‘bad things’ happen with mail-in ballots, citing NJ case

President Trump ramped up his frequent attacks on mail-in voting Sunday night, citing a New Jersey case in which four people were charged with voter fraud in connection with a municipal election in May.

“Absentee Ballots are fine. A person has to go through a process to get and use them,” the president tweeted. “Mail-In Voting, on the other hand, will lead to the most corrupt Election is USA history. Bad things happen with Mail-Ins. Just look at Special Election in Patterson, N.J. 19% of Ballots a FRAUD!”

Absentee Ballots are fine. A person has to go through a process to get and use them. Mail-In Voting, on the other hand, will lead to the most corrupt Election is USA history. Bad things happen with Mail-Ins. Just look at Special Election in Patterson, N.J. 19% of Ballots a FRAUD!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 28, 2020

New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal (D) charged four people, including a city councilman and councilman-elect, in Paterson last week with criminal conduct involving mail-in ballots. The discovery of hundreds of mail-in ballots in a Paterson mailbox sparked the investigation, CNN reported.

“Today’s charges send a clear message: If you try to tamper with an election in New Jersey, we will find you and we will hold you accountable,” Grewal said in a statement, according to the network. “We will not allow a small number of criminals to undermine the public’s confidence in our democratic process.”

Although the Passaic County Board of Elections has disqualified 3,190 mail-in ballots, or 19 percent, from the election, it did not determine they were all fraudulent. The board determined about 800 were improperly bundled in mailboxes and disqualified another 2,300 after checking signatures on the ballots against those on file, the Paterson Press reported.

Despite the president’s distinction between absentee voting by mail, Florida, where he voted by mail himself in the Republican primaries earlier this year, uses the terms interchangeably.

Twitter in May appended a fact-check to one of the president’s tweets for the first time ever after he falsely claimed California intended to send mail-in ballots to “anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there.”