Donald Trump Is Attempting ‘Voter Suppression’ Claims White House Reporter
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump tweeted about absentee voting ballots that he called illegal in both Nevada and Michigan and said that he would try to withhold funding from the states. The president claimed the mail-in voting would cause voter fraud, but one White House reporter named Brian Karem took to Twitter and accused Trump of attempting voter suppression.
“Another Lie from @realDonaldTrump. Voter fraud? Nope. An attempt at voter suppression from the president? Yep,” tweeted Karem in a comment where he also retweeted Trump’s tweet about Michigan’s absentee ballot applications.
The reporter’s tweet received nearly 500 retweets and over 2,000 likes on the popular social media platform. Some of the replies pointed out that states with Republican governors have also mailed out absentee ballot applications.
“Maybe I’m mistaken, but didn’t Georgia also do the same thing? Why isn’t THAT a problem for Trump? I think we all know why,” replied a Twitter user.
Several of the people who posted agreed with Karem and at least a few encouraged Twitter users to report the president’s original tweet as being misleading about a political election.
“Report the tweet.. he’s giving false information on voting, which is against the Twitter rules. He’s lying about this being illegal – it’s NOT,” another account noted.
“A hit job and punishment for states run by Democratic leadership. He did say if governors weren’t nice, he would do something about it,” read a third reply.
“Since when does the POTUS get to coerce states into running their elections HIS way?” a fourth Twitter user wondered.
1. Michigan is sending absentee ballot *applications* — not absentee ballots.
2. Nevada is exploring all-mail voting, which CO HI UT OR WA already do.
3. None of this is “illegal” or “fraud.” Blue states, purple states and red states are trying to adapt to voting in a pandemic. pic.twitter.com/iAz5CjWcyO
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 20, 2020
Currently, Utah, Colorado, Hawaii, Washington, and Oregon all vote primarily by mail, according to a Factcheck.org report. Plus, every state has some form of absentee mail-in voting available to registered voters. In 12 years between 2000 and 2012, 491 cases of voter fraud were found, and billions of votes were cast during that time. Of those, 24 percent of the prosecutions were related to absentee ballots. The report found that Trump’s previous statements about absentee voting were misleading.
The Inquisitr reported that others have called out President Trump on his tweets today about Nevada and Michigan expanding absentee voting amid the coronavirus pandemic. Jon Favreau, former Director of Speechwriting for President Barack Obama, said that Trump threatened to harm the citizens of both states, which was especially egregious because of the catastrophic flooding Michigan is experiencing in addition to COVID-19 concerns.
The president has a history of claims about voter fraud, and he even created a commission to investigate possible instances of it that he claimed occurred during the 2016 election. However, an AP News report revealed that in 2018 the commission disbanded after it failed to find widespread voter fraud.
