Brianna Keilar Mercedes Schlapp Split August 4 2020
Keilar pushes back on Trump campaign claims of voter fraud
07:45 - Source: CNN
Washington CNN  — 

President Donald Trump reversed his stance on voting by mail Tuesday when he tweeted that doing so in Florida is “safe and secure.” When asked about the reversal later Tuesday afternoon, Trump seemed to imply that Republican-run states with existing mail-in voting programs were up to par, but Democratic states establishing or expanding mail-in voting during the pandemic were not.

Earlier that day however, a senior adviser for Trump’s reelection campaign continued to discredit mail-in ballots.

On CNN Tuesday afternoon, Mercedes Schlapp claimed that with mail-in ballots, “you can cast it several days after the election” in states like Nevada which recently passed legislation expanding mail-in voting for the upcoming presidential election.

“Let’s take a state like Nevada, which – in the dead of the night – these Democrats pushed forward this law that as we know that even come Election Day you could still cast a ballot three days later if you don’t have a postmark or seven days later if you have a postmark,” Schlapp said.

Later in the interview, Schlapp asked, “Do you think it’s OK after November 3 to be able to cast a ballot three days after or seven days after the election, November 3? Yes or no?”

Host Brianna Keilar pushed back, responding that these claims are “muddying the waters” and that Schlapp was “just saying a bunch of crap.”

Facts First: Schlapp’s allegations need to be put in context. All mail-in ballots must be postmarked (and, therefore, “cast”) by or on Election Day, though some states still count ballots that are received up to 10 days after. in Nevada, mailed-in ballots can be still be counted if they arrive up to a week after November 3, as long as they were postmarked on or before Election Day. However, under the new Nevada legislation, there’s a potential loophole that could in theory allow ballots to be mailed after Election Day and still be counted, but only if the election worker is unable to read the postmark on the envelope.

The majority of states require the mail-in or absentee ballot be received before or on Election Day in order for it to count, according to Vote.org. In states like Nevada which count ballots received by a certain data after Election Day, elections officials check the postmark, a stamp the USPS adds to mail when they process it that shows the date of mailing

According to the Nevada law, “if the county or city clerk is unable to determine the date of the postmark on such a ballot, but the ballot is received by the clerk not later than 5 p.m. on the third day following the election, the ballot is deemed to have been postmarked on or before the day of the election.”

Regarding Nevada, Charles Stewart, a political science professor at MIT, said the Democrat-led effort might upset Republicans but is not especially ripe for fraud of the kind Schlapp described.

“This does appear to be among the more partisan of efforts that have been enacted among the states,” Stewart told CNN. “That said, the law does require a postmark to count, if it is received after Election Day. So, the idea that this is necessarily ripe for the type of scenario Trump has come up with is undermined by what the law itself says.”