Stephen Miller explains Trump's concerns over mail-in ballots
The White House senior policy advisor told 'Fox & Friends' universal mail-in ballots present a 'catastrophic problem'
Universal mail-in ballots present a "catastrophic problem" for presidential elections, White House Senior Policy Adviser Stephen Miller warned Friday.
In an interview on "Fox & Friends," Miller explained why President Trump brought the issue to the nation's attention on Thursday.
"Here is a shocking thing for your audience to consider: nobody who mails in a ballot has their identity confirmed. Nobody checks to see if they’re even a U.S. citizen. Think about that," he advised.
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"Any foreign national -- talk about foreign election interference – can mail in a ballot and nobody even verifies if they're a citizen of the United States of America," Miller said.
According to Miller, that interference could be happening on "a scale of potentially millions of people." He said Democrats have put forth an "insane" plan for mail-in voting in the House-passed HEROES Act, "barring voter identification as part of any mail-in balloting."
Yet, the risk of ballot fraud is generally reportedly rare. In 2017, the Brennan Center for Justice ranked that risk at infinitesimal 0.00004 percent to 0.0009 percent, based on studies of past elections.
Moreover, proponents of mail-in voting argue that the process would be subject to several degrees of verification -- much like absentee ballots.
During a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Attorney General William Barr told members of Congress he had "no reason to think" that the upcoming election will be "rigged," but that it was "common sense" to think foreign entities would try.
In a Thursday tweet mirroring Miller's rhetoric, the president wrote that mail-in voting was "already proving to be a catastrophic disaster."
"Even testing areas are way off. The Dems talk of foreign influence in voting, but they know that Mail-In Voting is an easy way for foreign countries to enter the race. Even beyond that, there’s no accurate count!" he exclaimed.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, more Americans than ever are expected to cast mail-in ballots this year -- surely presenting challenges -- but election officials say there is still little evidence to support these claims.
That said, Miller told the "Friends" hosts foreign actors weren't the only thing troubling the administration ahead of Nov. 3, 2020.
"In fact, in the Democrats' HEROES Act, the bill that was supposed to be for coronavirus relief, they actually have a provision in there barring voter identification as part of any mail-in balloting," he added. "That is insane."
Miller also took a swipe at former President Barack Obama's Thursday eulogy for civil rights icon John Lewis, a champion of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In his address, Obama cautioned the American people about how "those in power" were "doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting" by closing polling locations, utilizing restrictive ID laws, undermining the U.S. Postal Service, and "attacking our voting rights with surgical precision."
Miller said Obama's speech was "totally disconnected from reality" and "scandalously" and "outrageously" false.
"How can anybody claim that it is voter suppression to ask if somebody who’s voting, if John Smith is really John Smith?" he asked.
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"Americans have to present [an] ID to do all kinds of basic functions. To think that you wouldn't have to present an ID to vote in an election…It’s a simple principle: one citizen, one vote," Miller noted.
"[With] emphasis on the word ‘citizen.'"
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