Fact Checkers: Mail-In Voting Doesn’t Benefit Democrats Over Republicans Nor Does It Increase Fraud

The New York Times: Does Vote-By-Mail Favor Democrats? No. It’s A False Argument By Trump.
President Trump said that if the United States switched to all-mail voting, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” The G.O.P. speaker of the House in Georgia said an all-mail election would be “extremely devastating to Republicans.” Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, said universal mail voting would be “the end of our republic as we know it.” Yet leading experts who have studied voting by mail say none of that is true. (Epstein and Saul, 4/10)

The Washington Post Fact Check: Trump Once Again Misleads With Bogus Claims Of Voter Fraud
Trump, without evidence or by relying on dubious sources, has persistently claimed that massive voter fraud is occurring in the United States. The most recent major case allegedly involved a Republican operative, in North Carolina, but Trump instead suggests such fraud is being perpetrated on behalf of Democrats, especially in blue states. In recent days, he has attacked the whole notion of mail-in voting in a time of coronavirus social distancing, even though he votes by absentee ballot. (Kessler, 4/10)

The Associated Press: As Trump Rails Against Mail Voting, Some Allies Embrace It
President Donald Trump is warning without evidence that expanding mail-in voting will increase voter fraud. But several GOP state officials are forging ahead to do just that, undermining one of Trump’s arguments about how elections should be conducted amid the coronavirus outbreak. While Trump has complained that voting by mail was “ripe for fraud,” Republican state officials in Iowa, Ohio and West Virginia have all taken steps to ease access to mail-in ballots, following health officials’ warnings that voting in person can risk transmission of the deadly virus. (Riccardi, 4/10)

The Associated Press: Democrats Renew Vote-By-Mail Push As Virus Upends Elections
Democrats want to bolster mail-in voting and take other steps to make balloting easier this November in the next round of congressional efforts to revive the economy and battle the coronavirus pandemic, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. Pelosi’s still-evolving proposals Thursday drew immediate condemnation from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, echoing President Donald Trump’s opposition to federal attempts to prod states to relax restrictions for this fall’s presidential and congressional elections. (Fram and Cassidy, 4/10)

The New York Times: Inside Wisconsin’s Election Mess: Thousands Of Missing Or Nullified Ballots
Three tubs of absentee ballots that never reached voters were discovered in a postal center outside Milwaukee. At least 9,000 absentee ballots requested by voters were never sent, and others recorded as sent were never received. Even when voters did return their completed ballots in the mail, thousands were postmarked too late to count — or not at all. Cracks in Wisconsin’s vote-by-mail operation are now emerging after the state’s scramble to expand that effort on the fly for voters who feared going to the polls in Tuesday’s elections. (Corasaniti and Saul, 4/9)

Stat: Democrats Scramble To Refocus Their Health Platform On The Coronavirus
Democratic groups are scrambling to recalibrate the party’s health care messaging for the 2020 campaign to highlight the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Already, advocacy groups have aired commercials in Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin attacking Trump for downplaying the crisis in its early stages and waiting too long to ramp up the procurement of critical supplies like test kits, masks, and ventilators. (Lev Facher, 4/10)

NPR: Coronavirus Will Reshape Voting Rights In The 2020 Election
Who does and doesn't get to vote in November could rest on how states, political parties and the federal government respond to the coronavirus threat to U.S. elections. The pandemic has already caused major disruptions. Partisan legal fights have erupted over how to address voters' concerns about showing up at the polls in person. This week's primary in Wisconsin, with long lines of voters waiting in protective gear to cast their ballots, was a dire warning of what could lie ahead. (Fessler, 4/10)

The Associated Press: Biden Woos Skeptical Sanders Backers On Health, College Debt
Joe Biden attempted to lure progressives to his presidential campaign on Thursday with promises to expand Medicare and forgive college debt. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee backed lowering the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 60 while also pledging to cancel student debt for many low- and middle-income borrowers. (Weissert, Jaffe and Barrow, 4/8)

The Hill: Biden Releases Plans To Expand Medicare, Forgive Student Debt
Former Vice President Joe Biden released plans to expand Medicare eligibility and forgive some student debt as he works to unite a fractured Democratic base behind his presumptive 2020 presidential nomination. Biden announced Thursday he would lower the Medicare eligibility age to 60 and forgive federal student debt for low-income and middle-class people who attended public colleges and universities, historically black colleges and universities (HBCU), and underfunded minority-serving institution (MSI). (Axelrod, 4/9)

The New York Times: New Trump Attack Ad Falsely Suggests Former Governor Is Chinese
A new attack ad by President Trump’s re-election campaign portraying former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as soft on China includes an image of an Asian-American former governor of Washington State that appears to falsely suggest he is Chinese. The image, which appears briefly, was pulled from a 2013 event in Beijing, where Mr. Biden, now the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, shared a stage with Gary Locke, the former governor of Washington, who also served as President Barack Obama’s commerce secretary and ambassador to China. Mr. Locke is Chinese-American. (Karni, 4/10)