SEATTLE — President Donald Trump again Wednesday suggested mail-in voting has its problems.
"I'm not going to say which party does it but thousands of votes are gathered and they are dumped in a location and then all the sudden you lose an election you were supposed to win," he told reporters in the White House briefing room.
When pressed, he said, "We're going to find out about the proof."
Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman, who is Washington's top elections official, says there is no proof here of wrongdoing. She takes pride in the most recent presidential primary.
"We topped out at 49%, which is still the leading turnout in the country for presidential primaries," said Wyman on Wednesday.
Wyman, who won election as a Republican, says there are significant safety measures in place to protect vote-by-mail.
"The signature on the envelope is checked against the signature on file. If your signature doesn't match we contact you," she said. "For our tabulation system, those systems that actually count the ballots – first of all they're air gaped so they're not connected to any network or any connection to the internet."
Yet, the issue has gained steam during the pandemic crisis as states have delayed primaries. Wisconsin held its election Tuesday with concerns about widespread infection and a lack of polling sites. Some Democrats have called for a national change.
Wyman says perhaps eventually it could work, but such a system would be difficult to implement in a short amount of time. She says that's especially true for states with a small number of voters returning absentee ballots. Wyman says many states would need high speed envelope sorters, and there aren't enough in the supply chain right now due to the pandemic.