Title: Trump's Latest Voter Fraud Misinformation - FactCheck.org
Headings: Trump’s Latest Voter Fraud Misinformation
Trump’s Latest Voter Fraud Misinformation
Mail-in and Absentee Ballots
California Misinformation
Prevalence of Voter Fraud

Content: You know, why I voted? Because I happen to be in the White House and I won’t be able to go to Florida to vote.” Trump suggested — without any evidence — that ballots mailed from outside the state are more secure. “ [T]here’s a big difference between somebody that’s out of state and does a ballot and everything is sealed, certified, and everything else,” Trump responded. But elections experts told us states apply the same rules and processes for in-state and out-of-state mail-in ballots. “Domestic absentee voters in or out of state are treated the same,” Lonna Atkeson, a political science professor at the University of New Mexico and expert in election administration, told us via email. Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University and voter fraud expert, told us that while he is not aware of any valid statistics on the prevalence of fraud in mail-in ballots, “I do collect anecdotal reports, and it is clear (and I think most observers from across the political spectrum agree) that misconduct in the mail voting process is meaningfully more prevalent than misconduct in the process of voting in person.” “Misconduct still amounts to only a tiny fraction of the ballots cast by mail (and is far less prevalent than the President’s rhetoric suggests, which may well be why he’s felt comfortable voting by mail in the past),” Levitt added. Perhaps the most widely-reported recent example of absentee ballot fraud was a case during the 2018 midterm election in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District. Election results were overturned after it was learned that a Republican political operative improperly collected and possibly altered or discarded ballots to sway the election in favor of Republican Mark Harris.