Trump admits he’s blocking postal cash to stop mail-in votes
Published:Friday | August 14, 2020 | 9:25 AM
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump frankly acknowledged that he’s starving the US Postal Service of money to make it harder to process an expected surge of mail-in ballots, which he worries could cost him reelection.
In an interview on Fox Business Network, Trump explicitly noted two funding provisions that Democrats are seeking in a relief package that has stalled on Capitol Hill.
Without the additional money, he said, the postal service won’t have the resources to handle a flood of ballots from voters who are seeking to avoid polling places during the coronavirus pandemic.
“If we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money,” Trump told host Maria Bartiromo on Thursday. “That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting; they just can’t have it.”
Trump’s statements, including the false claim that Democrats are seeking universal mail-in voting, come as he is searching for a strategy to gain an advantage in his November matchup against Joe Biden.
He’s pairing the tough Postal Service stance in congressional negotiations with an increasingly robust mail-in-voting legal fight in states that could decide the election.
In Iowa, which Trump won handily in 2016 but is more competitive this year, his campaign joined a lawsuit Wednesday against two Democratic-leaning counties in an effort to invalidate tens of thousands of voters’ absentee ballot applications.
That followed legal manoeuvres in battleground Pennsylvania, where the campaign hopes to force changes to how the state collects and counts mail-in ballots.
And in Nevada, Trump is challenging a law sending ballots to all active voters.
His efforts could face limits.
The US Supreme Court on Thursday rebuffed Republicans who challenged an agreement in Rhode Island allowing residents to vote by mail through November’s general election without getting signatures from two witnesses or a notary.
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