#Trump questions whether 2020 election will be ‘rigged’

President Trump questioned whether the November election will be “rigged,” citing a report in which the CEO of a top Democratic data analytics firm suggested he may have an early lead on election night, but then Joe Biden could pull ahead when all of the mail-in ballots are counted days or even weeks later.

“Rigged Election?,” Trump wrote on Twitter Wednesday, linking to a report that said early results on election night might appear to show he won, potentially in a landslide.

The Axios report quoted Josh Mendelsohn, the CEO of Hawkfish, a company funded by Michael Bloomberg that does work for the Democratic National Committee and pro-Biden Super PACs.

Mendelsohn terms the scenario the “red mirage.”

More Democrats will vote by mail than Republicans because of coronavirus fears, meaning it will take longer to count up those votes, he said.

So on Nov. 3 Trump will appear to hold a huge Electoral College and popular vote lead because GOP voters are more likely to vote in person, but that margin of victory would ultimately disappear when all of the mail-in ballots are tallied.

“We are sounding an alarm and saying that this is a very real possibility, that the data is going to show on election night an incredible victory for Donald Trump,” Mendelsohn told “Axios on HBO.”

“When every legitimate vote is tallied and we get to that final day, which will be some day after Election Day, it will in fact show that what happened on election night was exactly that, a mirage,” he continued. “It looked like Donald Trump was in the lead and he fundamentally was not when every ballot gets counted.”

One modeling scenario shows Trump amassing a 408 to 130 lead in electoral votes if only 15 percent of the voting-by-mail ballots have been counted by election night.

But when 75 percent of those ballots are counted, possibly days later, the lead could jump to Biden.

It went on to predict that Biden could eventually emerge with a massive 334-204 electoral college victory, but noted that the final results could change depending on who actually votes.

Trump has long warned that voting by mail exposes the system to rampant fraud and his campaign has sued New Jersey and Nevada for their intention to allow mass mail-in voting.

The president has also dismissed concerns about voting during the coronavirus pandemic, pointing to the protests occurring across the nation over the death of George Floyd.

“IF YOU CAN PROTEST IN PERSON, YOU CAN VOTE IN PERSON!,” Trump wrote on Twitter in all caps last month.