Newt Gingrich Lies About Mail-In Voting, Claims Democrats Are Trying to “Steal” November Election

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Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich repeated President Donald Trump’s own false claims about mail-in voting, saying that Democrats can’t win an “honest election” so they are trying “to set up an ability to steal it.”

Gingrich pointed to the state of Nevada, which the president announced his administration will sue after its legislature approved a measure to provide absentee ballots to all registered voters.

“They’re going to mail ballots to 200,000 people, who according to the post office don’t exist. They’re either dead, they’ve moved, the address doesn’t work, 200,000 extra ballots floating around out there,” Gingrich said.

He also mentioned the state of New York, saying that it took too long to get the results of congressional primaries because of a delay in counting absentee ballots.

“You have two congressional districts that six weeks after the primary they haven’t been able to announce a winner,” Gingrich said, adding: “Now, you get into that in terms of a presidential campaign, nationwide, and I think this is going to be the most disastrous election in American history at the rate at which the Democrats are trying, frankly, to set up an ability to steal it because I don’t think they think they can win an honest election.”

The president and Republicans have repeatedly disparaged vote-by-mail options in response to criticisms from voting rights advocates who’ve expressed safety concerns during the coronavirus pandemic.

A study released in April from Stanford University’s Democracy and Polarization Lab found that contrary to the widely-held belief among the GOP that vote-by-mail gives Democrats an advantage over Republicans, vote-by-mail options do not benefit one party more than another.

“By comparing counties that adopt a vote-by-mail program to counties within the same state that do not adopt the program, we are able to compare the election outcomes and turnout behavior of voters who have different vote-by-mail accessibility but who have the same set of candidates on the ballot for statewide races,” researchers wrote.