A poll from Rasmussen Reports and the Heartland Institute proves that nationwide mail-in voting in the 2020 election was “an invitation for fraud,” Chris Talgo of the Heartland Institute says.

The poll, published this week, revealed that more than 1-in-5 voters in the 2020 election said they filled out mail-in ballots on behalf of someone else — a practice that is illegal under federal election law.

In an exclusive interview on SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Daily, Talgo said mailing “tens of millions of ballots based on outdated and inaccurate voter rolls, you’re probably going to have a substantial amount of voter fraud which is what our poll shows.”

“The lack of security to have tens of millions of ballots go through the U.S. Post Service … I think is an invitation for fraud,” Talgo said.

LISTEN: 

Breitbart · Chris Talgo – December 15, 2023

“One of the things that stood out to me is that we waited a couple of years to do this poll … because I personally think that people are going to be more prone to be honest a few years out than if we had done it in the immediate aftermath of the election,” Talgo said of the poll, which surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. likely voters — most of whom had voted in the 2020 election.

“One of the other things that I think verifies and adds veracity to this poll is that these people have no reason to lie … what motivation would they have?” Talgo said.

The poll, Talgo said, is in line with historical trends when it comes to mail-in voting.

“In the 2020 Democratic primary in New York and Pennsylvania, for example, 20 percent of their mail-in ballots were rejected for typical issues like lack of signature verification or other problems,” Talgo said. “One of the things we know is that in general, 20 percent of mail-in ballots are rejected for plenty of reasons, so this actually does fall in line with the historical average, which is that 20 percent of people who vote by mail, you know, tend to do it either fraudulently or not by the book.”

The 2020 election was unique, Talgo said, because more Americans voted by mail than ever before under the guise of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. Specifically, Talgo said about 60 percent of voters who backed President Joe Biden voted via mail, while just 23 percent of President Donald Trump voters voted by mail.

The poll also showed that 17 percent of mail-in voters in the 2020 election said they cast a ballot in a state where they were no longer a permanent resident — a violation of federal election law — while another 17 percent said they signed a mail-in ballot on behalf of someone else, also a violation of election law.

The issue, Talgo said, is that post-election, voter fraud is nearly impossible to prove.

“In the 2020 election … under the guise of the pandemic, we know that several states, several governors, [and] several secretaries of state, changed the voting rules to do away with any of those hurdles that are necessary … such as signature verification,” Talgo said.

“So it makes sense that when you mass mail tens of millions of ballots to people who don’t live in that state anymore or people who are dead, many of those ballots are going to come back and once they’re counted, they’re counted,” he continued. “It’s impossible to prove after the fact.”

“It’s so difficult to prove voter fraud,” Talgo said. “It’s not something you can easily prove because once those ballots are cast, you can’t access them, you can’t go back and match the ballots to the voters.”

Talgo noted that multiple critical swing states, including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, enacted statewide mail-in voting and thus mailed ballots to every voter on their states’ voter rolls — all under the guise of the pandemic.

“In many of those states, you had people who don’t live there anymore still receive ballots at that residence and we’ll just never know what happened to those ballots,” Talgo said.

“One other scenario that we think was probably very highly likely … let’s say your child is away at college or your spouse is not as politically active as you are, you could so easily just take their ballot, vote on behalf of them, sign the ballot for them, drop it off at the ballot box, and that’s another vote,” Talgo explained.

The narrative from the establishment media and many Democrat politicians following the 2020 election, Talgo said, became that it was the most secure in American history.

“The 2020 election was unlike any other in history and yet we’re told it was the ‘safest and most secure election in history’ and you cannot question it,” Talgo said. “It defies the smell test.”

“We did a second poll that we released after this one and a very high percentage, 48 percent of self-identified Democrat voters, believe that any media personalities who said that the 2020 election was not on the up and up should lose their public platform speaking privileges,” he continued.

Some Republican-led states, Talgo said, have made critical election law changes since the 2020 election. Florida, for example, purged its voter rolls and required registrants to re-register to vote while also banning ballot harvesting, requiring ID to vote, and mandating that a voter must have an excuse to vote by mail.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.