April 14, 2021
By making accusations of vote fraud he was not able to prove, both before and after the election, Donald Trump made it easy for his critics to dismiss as dishonest any and all concerns about election integrity. Typical was a New York Times “fact check” from late September denouncing as “false” GOP claims that expanding access to absentee ballots and voting by mail facilitated election fraud.
“There have been numerous independent studies and government reviews finding voter fraud extremely rare in all forms,” wrote Linda Qiu. That includes “‘absentee ballots’ and ‘vote-by-mail ballots’” between which there is “no meaningful difference.” Not only are both “secure forms of voting,” according to Qiu; they are considered the “gold standard of election security.”