President Donald Trump refused to say during Tuesday night's presidential debate if he would accept the election results. 'Thi...
President Donald Trump refused to say during Tuesday night's presidential debate if he would accept the election results.
'This is going to be a fraud like you've never seen,' he said of the November vote, citing mail-in ballots.
Trump has repeatedly claimed mail-in ballots will lead to a 'rigged' election despite numerous studies showing that is the case.
'If I see tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated, I can't go along with that,' Trump said as many states have begun mailing out their general election ballots.
President Donald Trump refused to say during Tuesday night's presidential debate if he would accept the election results even as Joe Biden said both sides would
Election workers open and sort mail-in ballot requests in Olathe, Kansas, as several states have begun the mail-in vote process
Priscilla Bennett, the first person in Philadelphia to cast an early ballot for the 2020 President Election, is seen at a voting satellite location on Temple University's campus on Tuesday
More than 80 million people are expected to vote by mail this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
'I want an honest ballot count,' Trump complained.
Joe Biden said the results of the election would be accepted by both sides.
'He has no idea what he's talking about,' Biden said. 'Here's the deal. The fact is I will accept it. And he will too. You know why? Because once the winner is declared after all the ballots are counted, all the votes are counted, that will be the end of it. That will be the end of it. And if it's me, fine. If it's not me, I will support the outcome.'
He defended mail-in voting.
'It's not been established at all that there is a fraud related to mail-in ballots - that somehow it's a fraudulent process,' he said.
'He's trying to scare people into thinking it's not going to be legitimate,' he said of Trump.
The president said his supporters would be watching for possible voter fraud.
'I'm urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully,' he said.
Philadelphia City Commissioner Lisa Deeley holds up a sample mail-in ballot during a news conference on Tuesday
Absentee ballot election workers stuff ballot applications at the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections office in Charlotte, North Carolina
And he said he was 'counting' on the Supreme Court to 'look at the ballots' in the presidential election - a remark that comes as Democrats have criticized the president for pushing his nominee to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ahead of the election.
His nominee, Amy Comey Barrett, would not answer when reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday asked her if she would recuse herself from any election case should she be confirmed before November.
Trump also claimed that ballots with his name on them have been found in a creek and in a wastebasket.
The creek reference is unclear but the wastebasket reference is likely to nine ballots that an election official in Luzerne County, Pa., found discarded earlier this month.
Seven of those ballots were for Trump and an investigation is underway. The worker who discarded them was fired.
Democrats have feared Trump would not accept the results of the November 3 election. Both sides have legal teams on stand by in case of challenges to mail-in ballots.
Given that different states have different rules regarding mail-in ballots - such as when the count can start and how long they can be accepted by election boards - the results of the presidential election may not be known for a few weeks.
As of last week, more than 28 million ballots have been requested and another 43 million set to be automatically mailed to voters, according to a CNN analysis.
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