Trump tweet mischaracterizes New York’s voting woes

In numerous public statements, President Donald Trump has questioned the security of voting by mail, and he is using uncounted ballots from New York’s June primary to make his case. 

In a July 29 tweet, Trump said: "New York Mail-In voting is in a disastrous state of condition. Votes from many weeks ago are missing - a total mess. They have no idea what is going on. Rigged Election. I told you so. Same thing would happen, but on massive scale, with USA. Fake News refuses to report!"

Terms like "disastrous state" and "total mess" are subjective and open to interpretation. We recognize that in political rhetoric, there is license for hyperbole. Clearly, there were problems with voting by mail. The delayed results and other issues that emerged from New York’s June 23 primary have been documented by reporters. A month after the primary, some races had not been called. And it stemmed from the expansion of absentee voting as a way to avoid possible exposure to COVID-19 at polling places. But we wondered about Trump’s claim that "votes from many weeks ago are missing" and the election was "rigged."  

The New York State Board of Elections told PolitiFact that there are an unknown number of ballots from eligible voters that cannot be counted and fall into two categories. 

"We have received reports of voters who applied for absentee ballots at the front end, but did not receive them," said John Conklin, director of public information at the state board. "Some of those voters were not entitled to ballots because they were not qualified. This was a primary and some voters were not enrolled in the party having the primary. We have also received reports of voters who returned ballots that did not arrive at the board. The number of ballots in both categories is unknown."

We asked the White House press office about what Trump meant when he said "missing" and "rigged" but did not receive a response. 

We also talked to voting experts and election lawyers about Trump’s claim. Several mentioned the primary in the 12th Congressional District, an election that Trump has also mentioned when talking about problems in New York. Nearly all cautioned that what Trump said in his tweet -- that the election in New York was "rigged" -- is unfounded, and that the problems in New York had to do with election workers overwhelmed by vastly more absentee ballots than is typical, as well as strict laws governing absentee ballots. The problems cannot be attributed to ballots cast fraudulently or ballots that were tampered with after they were submitted, they said.

"There’s no rigging of any election here," said Sarah Steiner, an election lawyer based in New York City whose clients hold varying positions on the mail-in ballot issue. "There are people trying to make an election work under the worst possible circumstances," she said. 

Sarah Goff, deputy director of CommonCause/NY, estimates that 40 to 60 percent of the people who cast ballots in the primary statewide voted with an absentee ballot, a dramatic increase from a typical election.   

Norm Ornstein, a political scientist with the American Enterprise Institute who describes himself as a political moderate, said that the situation "is more an example of ineptitude than it is malfeasance." 

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"The state has a long history of incompetence when it comes to running elections," said Ornstein. "There’s nothing new here." 

Two candidates and a group of voters whose ballots were not counted in New York City filed a lawsuit against the state Board of Elections and won. The lawsuit, citing information from Brooklyn Democratic Chairperson Rodneyse Bichotte, states that almost 4 percent of ballots in Brooklyn alone could be invalidated. Plaintiffs’ lawyers argued in favor of counting ballots that were disqualified because of missing or late postmarks. 

The number of ballots that were cast in good faith by eligible voters and were not counted for various reasons -- a missing signature, a missing postmark, or another similar problem, is not known. 

We reached out to the conservative Heritage Foundation, which didn’t look at the situation in New York, but said in general, absentee and mail-in ballots are unaccounted for in every election. Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission, cited reports filed with Congress by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and said that in the last four federal elections, 1.3 million ballots were rejected by election officials.  PolitiFact found this to be about 1 percent of votes cast. 

The state Board of Elections told us that an unknown number of voters who requested ballots did not receive them, and that ballots placed in the mail were not received by the board. These could be considered "missing," the word used by Trump. 

But in the same tweet, Trump claims that the election in New York was "rigged," leaving the reader with the impression that these ballots are missing because there was malicious intent, where none has been proven in New York. 

We rate Trump’s claim Mostly False.