2020
ELECTIONS
Biden: ‘This president is going to try to steal
this election’
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee
predicted Trump will limit Americans' access to voting in the general election.
By QUINT
FORGEY
06/11/2020
08:10 AM EDT
Former Vice
President Joe Biden predicted on Wednesday that President Donald Trump will try
to “steal” the general election in November by limiting Americans’ access to
voting.
“This
president is going to try to steal this election,” Biden, the presumptive
Democratic presidential nominee, told Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show With
Trevor Noah.”
“This is
the guy who said all mail-in ballots are fraudulent — voting by mail — while he
sits behind a desk in the Oval Office and writes his mail-in ballot to vote in
a primary,” Biden added.
Trump has repeatedly leveled allegations of
large-scale mail-in voter fraud as Democratic and Republican state elections
officials have moved to expand the remote method of ballot-casting because of
the coronavirus pandemic.
In addition to widespread corruption at the polls, the
president has also claimed that a large-scale shift toward mail-in voting would
yield unfavorable electoral results for the Republican Party, despite conceding
that even he voted by mail in Florida’s primary in March.
Although
election experts acknowledge there are slightly higher levels of voter fraud
perpetrated through mail-in voting than in-person voting, they agree overall
cases of election fraud are exceedingly rare and that local officials can
implement measures to thwart such activity. There is no evidence of the type of
widespread voter fraud that Trump has alleged.
A study
published last month found that, on the whole, voting by mail does not benefit
one party over another. The latest, most high-profile example of mail-in voter
fraud came in 2019, when an election for a North Carolina House seat was tossed
out after a Republican operative illegally collected ballots.
Still,
Trump’s accusations have heightened concerns among Democrats that he could
refuse to leave office should Biden win in November or if the outcome were to
remain inconclusive in the immediate aftermath of the election.
Biden
revealed Wednesday he had acknowledged the possibility that Trump would not
assent to a peaceful transition of power. But he suggested leaders within
America’s armed forces — including former military officials who have spoken out
against the president in recent weeks — would eventually force Trump from
office.
“I was so
damn proud. You have four chiefs of staff coming out and ripping the skin off
of Trump, and you have so many rank-and-file military personnel saying, ‘Whoa,
we’re not a military state. This is not who we are,’” Biden said. “I promise
you, I’m absolutely convinced they will escort him from the Whtie House with
great dispatch.”
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