(Headline USA) U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Thursday delivered a broadside attack on mail-in voting as prone to undue influence and coercion.
Democrat operatives, including the Left’s lead election-stealing attorney, Marc Elias, have been pushing for increased mail-in ballots since even before President Donald Trump declared a national health emergency in March to address the coronavirus pandemic.
Even as evidence shows elections can be safely conducted, with social-distancing techniques and other virus treatments helping ease the monthslong panic, Democrats have continued to double down on the effort to overtax the mail system and delay the election results.
Recent primaries revealed that in many areas—including key swing states that Trump won in 2016—issues such as failed delivery of completed ballots, duplicate ballots and ballots sent to ineligible voters all cast aspersions on the process.
Some blue states, including Pennsylvania and New Jersey, also have seen fraud rings exposed in recent months.
Trump has emphasized that he supports the standard absentee ballot systems states have in place for those with valid reason to use them but opposes an unnecessary over-reliance on it.
Speaking in Arizona, Barr said that mail-in ballots impinge on the historic American tradition of the secret ballot.
Barr was in Phoenix to announce a crackdown on methamphetamine trafficking but spent the majority of his time answering questions unrelated to the drug busts.
Barr focused on efforts by some states, including Nevada, to mail ballots to all registered voters as the coronavirus pandemic creates fears about in-person voting.
The Trump campaign is suing to block a law passed by the Democratic-led Legislature in July.
Barr laid out the traditional American voting method that he said was at risk—one filled with checks and balances and the historic secret ballot. Americans go to a polling place, identify themselves, go into a private voting booth and mark a ballot.
“Those measures have been developed over the years precisely because of concerns of fraud and coercion,” Barr said.
“And you can’t sell your vote, no one can intimidate you, no one can buy your vote. And it reduces radically the risk of fraud when you have a secret ballot that’s organized the way we’ve had it organized.”
Barr said voting by mail eliminates all those protections.
“There’s no more secret vote, there’s no secret vote,” he said. “Your name is associated with a particular ballot. The government and the people involved can find out and know how you voted. And it opens up the door to coercion.”
He went on to say voters could be coerced to cast their vote a certain way if they get a mail ballot, and said there might be situations where someone in a nursing home is persuaded to let others fill out their ballot.
“And finally the fact that ballots are mailed out profligately the way they would be, many of them misdirected we know because of inaccuracy of voting lists, there are going to be ballots floating around and collected,” he said.
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who is the state’s chief election officer, slammed Barr for attacking what is a “decades-long history of secure and reliable ballot-by-mail procedures” in Arizona.
“It is a shame that high-ranking officials are sowing doubt in our democratic institutions.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
