US officials: No signs of foreign targeting of mail-in vote
Source: AP
By ERIC TUCKER and CHRISTINA A. CASSIDY
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials said Wednesday there has been no intelligence to suggest that foreign countries are working to undermine mail-in voting and no signs of any coordinated effort to commit widespread fraud through the vote-by-mail process, despite numerous claims made by President Donald Trump in recent months.
The officials at multiple federal agencies stopped short of directly contradicting Trump, but their comments made it clear they had not seen evidence to support the president’s statements that voter fraud will be rampant in the upcoming election and that the expected surge in mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic leaves November’s presidential election especially vulnerable to foreign interference.
Trump, for instance, tweeted July 30 that mail-in voting was proving to be a “catastrophic disaster” and added: “The Dems talk of foreign influence in voting, but they know that Mail-In Voting is an easy way for foreign countries to enter the race. Even beyond that, there’s no accurate count!”
But a senior official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, asked on a conference call with reporters Wednesday about the threat of foreign countries manufacturing their own ballots or amplifying disinformation about the integrity of the vote-by-mail process, said there was no information or intelligence that any adversary was “engaged in any kind of activity to undermine any part of the mail-in vote.”
Protesters demonstrate during a "National Day of Action to Save the "Peoples" Post Office!" outside the Flagler Station post office, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2020, in Miami. The pandemic has pushed the Postal Service into a central role in the 2020 elections, with tens of millions of people expected to vote by mail rather than in-person. At the same time, Trump has acknowledged he is withholding emergency aid from the service to make it harder to process mail-in ballots, as his election campaign legally challenges mail voting procedures in key states. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Read more: https://apnews.com/070152acd189be79c24285480f2449b1
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