#AG William Barr says expansive mail-in voting is ‘playing with fire’

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Attorney General William Barr
Matt McClain/The Washington Post via AP

Attorney General William Barr condemned lawmakers who are pushing for expansive mail-in voting in the November election as “playing with fire” because it carries a threat of rampant fraud and could threaten the credibility of the vote.

“This is playing with fire. We’re a very closely divided country here. And people have to have confidence in the results of the election and the legitimacy of the government, and people trying to change the rules to this to this methodology which, as a matter of logic is very open to fraud and coercion, is reckless and dangerous and people are playing with fire,” Barr said in an interview on CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer” Wednesday.

Barr pointed to a bipartisan committee led by former President Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker in 2009 that the attorney general said concluded that mail-in voting “is fraught with the risk of fraud and coercion.”

“The only time the narrative changed is after this administration came in,” Barr said. “But elections that have been held with mail have found substantial fraud and coercion. For example, we indicted someone in Texas — 1,700 ballots collected from people who could vote — he made them out and voted for the person he wanted to, OK, because, that kind of thing happens with mail-in ballots.”

Blitzer noted while there have been individual cases, there have been no widespread accounts of fraud.

“We haven’t had the kind of widespread use of mailing ballots as being proposed. We’ve had absentee ballots from people who request them from a specific address. Now what we’re talking about is mailing them to everyone on the voter list when everyone knows those voter lists are inaccurate,” Barr responded.

The CNN host also brought up voters’ fears of going to polling places this November during the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 185,000 Americans, as one of the main reasons for proposing extensive mail-in voting efforts.

“The appropriate way to deal with that is, No. 1, arrangements at the polls that protect people, which can be done. And, No. 2, people who had pre-existing conditions and are particularly vulnerable can get an absentee ballot,” Barr said. “I voted by absentee ballot, not by mail, I actually went to the office to cast my vote but absentee ballots are fine.”