Fact check: Rudy Giuliani and Eric Trump’s press conference was filled with false allegations about ballot papers in Pennsylvania

Fact check: Rudy Giuliani and Eric Trump’s press conference was filled with false allegations about ballot papers in Pennsylvania

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Their attempts to discredit votes by mail are the latest in a sea of ​​misinformation on the subject being propagated by the Trump campaign.

Giuliani tried to spot delays in the number of votes and other issues on the ballot papers, implying fraud.

“This whole new thing that has never happened before in our country, these moods, which has been of concern to everyone because it can easily be deceptive,” Giuliani said.

Facts first: Ballot papers are not new and do not easily lead to fraud, despite the insistence of the president and his allies.

In both 2016 and 2018, about 25% of U.S. voters voted by mail, which includes the handful of states that prefer to vote by mail and traditional absentee ballots.
Richard Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, told CNN that ‘absenteeism at relatively higher rates than other types of election fraud’ occurs, but that the overall rate is still ‘fairly low’. .
You can read more about ballot papers and voter fraud here.

Illegal Score in Philadelphia

Giuliani highlights complaints from representatives of the campaign and maintains that observers in Philadelphia are not getting the access they legally deserve to see the opening and sorting of ballots. Consequently, Giuliani argued that the whole count was ‘illegal’.

Facts first: This is false. A judge in Philadelphia’s Election Day has ruled that the city’s Electoral Council abides by the law in how it grants observers access to the recruitment process.

The judge allows the observers to be present, the judge wrote, but they do not have the right to examine the workers counting the ballots or look over their shoulders.

Furthermore, local, state and federal officials did not report any major incidents that questioned the legitimacy of the count or how the pollsters could be treated.

Voting in Pennsylvania

Eric Trump claims that in Pennsylvania: “They do not let our poll viewers look at the polls. They do not let them in.”

Facts first: This is misleading. There were sometimes cases where voting workers did not understand the rules and these were handled by the district attorney, but mostly registered voting guards were allowed at polling stations.

The Pennsylvania Secretary of State’s office said he was aware of only one incident, cited by a lawyer for the Trump campaign, in which a viewer registered for a different zone and a different section, is not allowed in a polling station, despite rules allowing access to any city venue.

Fraud in Pennsylvania

Eric Trump suggested that the Trump campaign be generally deceived from a victory in the state of Pennsylvania.

“We’re going to win Pennsylvania, but they’re trying to cheat us out of it,” Trump said.

Facts first: While it is unclear what exactly Eric Trump was referring to, the ongoing counting of votes in Pennsylvania is not deceiving. Ballot papers are always counted after election day.
In Pennsylvania, absentee ballots cannot be processed until the morning of November 3, and the ballots received until November 6 can still be counted as long as they are posted on or before November 3rd. It is therefore not surprising that the score still continues. Election Day in Pennsylvania. After the state decided last fall to allow absent ballots for this election ‘no apology’, Republicans in Pennsylvania tried to change the state’s law so that processing could begin earlier and the number of days after the election that provinces could receive ballots, would be restricted. However, they were unsuccessful, and the status quo remained.
It was not the first time the Trump campaign had falsely claimed that Pennsylvania’s policy for ballot papers amounted to fraud. President Donald Trump implied just as much on Tuesday in response to a U.S. Supreme Court decision to uphold a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that could count votes received up to three days after the election, even if there is no legible postmark .

Democrats in Pennsylvania

Eric Trump claims Pennsylvania is the “only way to victory” for Democrats.

Facts first: Following CNN projections for former Vice President Joe Biden to carry Wisconsin and Michigan, the Democrats’ path to victory does not require them to win Pennsylvania, as long as they transport Arizona and Nevada, to which they currently lead.

Conversely, Trump must win Pennsylvania to win, even if he secures most of the other remaining states.

Trump and lawsuits

Eric Trump made the Trump campaign’s plans to sue in Pennsylvania sound like the situation in Pennsylvania was so dire that it threatened to sue them.

“We’re going to file a case in Pennsylvania. It’s a shame we have to do this. It’s the last thing we wanted to do, it’s the last thing my dad wanted to do,” he said.

Facts first: Although we can not verify the intentions of the president, his campaign has filed lawsuits until the election against the entries and new policies put in place by states to address the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the election. And even outside the context of this election, Trump is known for being quite litigious. It is therefore at best misleading that his son claims that this is the last thing he wanted to do.

CNN’s Kelly Mena, DJ Judd and Katelyn Polantz contributed to this article.

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