Election observer says no evidence for Trump's claims
The head of an international delegation monitoring the U.S. election said his team has no evidence to support Trump's claims about alleged fraud involving mail-in absentee ballots.
Michael Georg Link, a German lawmaker who heads an observer mission of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), told German public broadcaster rbb Thursday that "on the election day itself, we couldn't see any violations" at the U.S. polling places they visited.
ink said he was "very surprised" by Trump's claims about postal ballot fraud because the United States has a long history of this method of voting going back to the 19th century. The Vienna-based OSCE, of which the U.S. is a member, conducts observer missions at major elections in all of its member countries.
"We looked into this. We found no violations of the rules whatsoever," Link told rbb. He said neither U.S. election observers nor media found any evidence of fraud either, though the OSCE team on Wednesday repeated long-standing concerns about disenfranchisement of some voters and the distorting effects of campaign finance laws.
Trump used his Twitter feed to falsely claim victory in several key states and amplify unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about Democratic gains as absentee and early votes were tabulated.
He weighed in again on Twitter on Thursday, writing: "Stop the count!" Twitter later flagged a different Trump tweet as disputed and possibly misleading; Trump tweeted that "any vote that came in after election day will not be counted."
Several states allow mailed-in votes to be accepted after election day as long as they were postmarked by Tuesday. That includes Pennsylvania, where ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 can be accepted if they arrive up to three days later.