Appearing Wednesday on Hill.TV’s Rising, Bush-era Department of Homeland Security Secretary and former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge (R) claimed that there is “absolutely no” evidence that mail-in voting brings fraud in elections.
A partial transcript is as follows:
KRYSTAL BALL: I think one of the concerns that have come from Republicans in particular of which you are one, though you don’t share this concern, is that [mail-in ballots] would be a move that would benefit Democrats. Is their actually any evidence of that?
FORMER DHS SEC. TOM RIDGE: Absolutely none. Ironically, it’s a very false claim. At the conceptual level, if we think about an absentee ballot, the benefit doesn’t go to either party. Now, the party that focuses on it, the campaign that focuses on it, the candidates that use it, may gain an enormous advantage. But conceptually the notion of absentee ballots doesn’t favor one party over the other, pure and simple. Never has and never will.
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There is no anecdotal or historical evidence that suggests the kind of massive fraud or massive abuse. I think there is a false alarm associated with that concern.
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I would remind the president that about 25 percent of the Americans who voted in 2016, the election in which he prevailed, voted absentee.”