Trump moots delaying 2020 election over mail-in poll concerns ‘until people can properly, securely & safely vote’

Mail-in voting threatens to make the November election the “most inaccurate & fraudulent” in US history, so the nation may be better off simply postponing it, President Donald Trump has suggested in a tweet.

Sharing his ongoing concerns over mail-in voting, Trump raised the possibility of delaying the election “until people can properly, securely and safely vote.”

The US president appears to be considering an idea that just a few months ago he angrily dismissed. In April, his presumed Democratic rival Joe Biden claimed the incumbent would “try to kick back the election somehow.”

“That's the only way he thinks he can possibly win,” Biden said.

Trump responded with an angry rebuke, calling it “made-up propaganda,” and adding: “I never even thought of changing the date of the election. Why would I do that? November 3. It's a good number. No, I look forward to that election.”

Since April, Trump has apparently lost ground to Biden in terms of popularity as the US drags through the Covid-19 pandemic and an unprecedented economic slowdown. Both nationally and in battleground states, the president currently lags behind the former vice president, according to pollsters.

A spokesman for Trump's re-election campaign later said the president was simply raising the question of a potential delay.

"The President is just raising a question about the chaos Democrats have created with their insistence on all mail-in voting," Trump campaign spokesman Hogan Gidley told CNN.

Trump has already questioned the security of mail-in voting on numerous occasions. In May, he launched into a heated quarrel with Twitter after the platform marked some of his posts expressing concerns over potential election fraud with a “fact-check” note suggesting people click it and learn “facts” about the practice.

Regardless of what Trump and Biden think of a potential postponement, the election date is mandated by federal statute and altering it would require an act of Congress, where Democrats currently control the House.

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