US elections 2020: no, mail-in votes are not rigged by Democrats, and other fact checks

US citizens will take part in an extraordinary, pandemic-era election on Tuesday. Indeed, many already have: ballots cast either through mail-in or early voting are equal to more than two-thirds of the total votes cast in 2016, as people around the country opt to avoid the crowds at polling stations.

But beyond changing the way Americans vote, the coronavirus pandemic has also induced a deluge of misinformation that election officials say threatens the integrity of the vote itself.

From accusations of widespread mail-in voter fraud to claims that counting votes after election night is illegal, many of the falsehoods have come from one particularly high-profile source – US President Donald Trump.

“These falsehoods may well undermine the American people‘s faith in our democracy,” Ellen Weintraub, head of the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), warned in May about Trump’s attacks on the election’s integrity.

Loss of confidence in the results was in fact the “number one” threat to election security, William Evanina, the director of US counter-intelligence, said during an recent TV interview. That was in part because foreign adversaries are amplifying misinformation from public officials, including Trump, to sow discord, he said.

As US voters brace for a likely increase in inflammatory rhetoric about the election’s process and results, the South China Morning Post reviewed a few of the erroneous, misleading or baseless claims Trump has made in the run-up to this race.