NAPLES, Florida | Democrats in Florida, a pivotal swing state, are touting their dominance of vote-by-mail registration.
The Miami-Dade Democratic Party boasted in a newsletter released Thursday that Democrats have a 302,000 vote-by-mail advantage over the Republican Party in Florida. However, the county has been reliably blue for nearly three decades.
“This year, during a pandemic, having the option to vote from home will be more important than ever,” their newsletter read, sharing a link for people to click and register to vote-by-mail.
President Trump has sounded the alarm against mail-in voting, warning it’s ripe for fraud and the “biggest risk” to fair elections in November.
Still, his campaign said it isn’t too concerned about numbers in Florida.
In 2016, Democrats had an advantage of more than 337,187 vote-by-mail registrations, but Mr. Trump won the state by more than 110,000 votes.
“Florida Democrats seem to have forgotten context matters,” Samantha Zager, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, told The Washington Times.
“Compared to previous election years, Republicans are even better positioned to win this November when it comes to voter registration, and given our permanent presence in the state since 2015, we have momentum on our side to reelect President Trump and Republicans up and down the ballot,” she said.
The president has continued to express worry about abuses of mail-in voting, saying last week during a Fox News town hall in Wisconsin that it could be the “biggest risk” to a fair outcome in November.
Many states are promoting the vote-by-mail option to avoid long lines at the polls and combat the spread of COVID-19.
Studies have found that voter fraud is relatively rare compared to the millions of ballots cast, but it does happen.
The conservative Heritage Foundation compiled a list of 1,285 proven instances of voter fraud, including more than a hundred cases of fraudulent use of absentee ballots.
The absentee ballot fraud spanned dozens of states, including Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany has insisted there are questions over the integrity of general voting by mail, though she herself has voted by mail nearly a dozen times.
She recently pointed to Los Angeles County as an example of an area with a potential problem, noting 112% of the population is registered to vote.
“Ask yourself how that happens,” Ms. McEnany told Fox News. “That’s what [the president] is against. He’s not against the average everyday American who has a reason for casting their ballot — to get an absentee cast in that manner.”
The dispute over voting by mail cuts closely along party lines.
Republicans aren’t as fearful of the impact of the virus on Election Day, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll released earlier this month.
It revealed just 28% of Democrats said they would be willing to go to the polls, but 63% of Republicans said the same, so long as social distancing can be observed. Sixty-seven % of Democrats, though, support voting by mail while only 33% of Republicans do.
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