The director of the FBI has refuted an often-repeated and unsubstantiated claim by president Donald Trump that mail-in ballots are being used for widespread voter fraud.
Appearing before the Senate homeland security committee on Thursday, Christopher Wray said the agency had "not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it's by mail or otherwise."
“We have seen voter fraud at the local level from time to time,” he said, adding that “to change a federal election outcome by mounting that kind of fraud at scale would be a major challenge for an adversary, but people should make no mistake that we’re vigilant as to the threat and watching it carefully.”
The comments, in response to a question about whether Americans should feel safe voting by mail in the 2020 election, are a clear rebuke to president Trump’s repeated claims that mail-in ballots are vulnerable to fraud.
The president made dozens of false statements regarding the safety of mail-in ballots over the last few months, beginning just as the coronavirus pandemic led to an increase in demand for their use.
"Mail ballots are a very dangerous thing for this country, because they're cheaters," Mr Trump said back in April. "They're fraudulent in many cases."
Just last month he tweeted that the [mail-in ballot] fraud and abuse will be an embarrassment to our Country.”
Mr Trump has not provided any evidence to match his assertions.
It might seem counterintuitive for a president to attack a method of voting that is also used by his own supporters, but polls suggest that a far greater number of Democrats plan to vote by mail in November’s presidential election.
According to a recent survey, more than one-third of Americans plan to vote by mail in November. Along party lines, 48 per cent of people who plan to voter for Joe Biden plan to vote by mail, and only 23 per cent for Mr Trump.
