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McClatchy Washington Bureau

Politics

Kate Irby

Trump says USPS can't handle a mostly mail-in election. Many states already vote that way

President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden participate in the first presidential debate at the Health Education Campus of Case Western Reserve University, on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020, in Cleveland. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca Press/TNS)

WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump expressed doubt that mail-in ballots would result in a legitimate election during the presidential debate Tuesday night, even saying "the system can't handle it."

"You know it can't be done," Trump said about the mail-in ballot process. "When you have 80 million ballots coming in and swamping the system, it can't be done."

Trump's claim has been refuted by his own postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, who has explicitly said the U.S. Postal Service can handle a mostly mail-in election.

A man exercises while watching on TV as President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden participate in the first presidential debate at the Health Education Campus of Case Western Reserve University, on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020, in Cleveland. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca Press/TNS)

Democrats and other officials became worried about the U.S. Postal Service being able to handle a mostly mail-in election after DeJoy announced changes to the agency. He said the changes, which slowed down mail delivery times, were meant to be cost-cutting measures to preserve the Postal Service, which was set to run out of money in 2021.

After a national outcry over mail slowing down just months before an election, DeJoy said he was reversing the changes until at least the November election, to prevent even the appearance of election interference. He has since said the USPS is well-equipped to handle election mail.

Trump's administration and many Republicans have tried to draw a distinction between absentee and mail-in ballots. They say absentee ballots are more secure, because you have to request them, whereas mail-in ballots are less secure, because they are sent to registered voters automatically.

This distinction doesn't actually exist _ many states have different processes and call it different names. Some states _ such as Florida, where Trump voted _ require you to request a ballot before they send it in the mail, but still call it a mail-in ballot.

And though Trump and others frequently say automatically sending ballots to registered voters is a process rife for voter fraud, there's little evidence to back up those statements.

In California, registered voters will be receiving a ballot automatically in the 2020 general election, a change from previous years when ballots had to be requested. It's one of a handful of states that have decided to send out ballots automatically during the coronavirus pandemic in hopes it eases crowds at polling locations, where the virus could spread.

But Californians are largely used to voting by mail. In the 2018 general election, 65% of ballots were vote-by-mail. In the 2020 primary, which occurred in the first week of March, before the country shut down due to coronavirus concerns, 72% of ballots were vote-by-mail.

Officials decided to make one major change to the process after that primary. About 100,000 ballots were thrown out statewide, most of them due to arriving too late. Ballots had to be postmarked by the primary date but could be received up to three days later and still count.

For the 2020 general election, California officials extended that deadline, now saying that as long as ballots are postmarked by Election Day they can be counted up to 17 days later. While it's likely to prolong results in close elections, officials hope it would significantly cut down on the number of ballots that have to be discounted.