A man in California has pleaded guilty to charges that he fraudulently cast his dead mother’s ballots in three different elections.
Caesar Peter Abutin was charged last month with one felony count of fraud and one count of fraudulent voting. He pleaded guilty to committed mail-in voting fraud three times from 2012 to 2014 using the ballots of his late mother, who died in July 2006, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office announced Tuesday. The DA’s office said he signed the name of his mother when applying for vote-by-mail ballots.
President Trump on Monday warned that if universal mail-in voting is allowed, the U.S. is “never going to have a fair” presidential election.
“I have to tell you, that if you go with this universal mail-in … tens of millions of ballots being sent to everybody and their dogs, dogs are getting them, OK? People that have been dead for 25 years are getting them, you have to see what’s happening. Then you’re never going to have a fair election,” Trump said in a Fox News interview.
While less than 10 states now have universal mail-in voting, where ballots are mailed to every registered voter, Democrats are pushing for wider use of the practice, which has prompted the current battle over the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called lawmakers back into session to hold hearings on the USPS.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced on Tuesday that he will suspend several cost-cutting initiatives in an effort “to avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail.”
Trump said he’s currently taking steps to fix what he called a long-term “disaster” in the USPS’s finances. “This isn’t a Trump thing. This has been one of the disasters of the world, the way it’s been run,” Trump said. “What am I supposed to do, let it continue to be run badly?”
And Trump called Pelosi’s move a “con game,” saying there is already ample money available to the USPS. “The Post Office, there’s $25 billion sitting there, but they really want $1 trillion to bail out their badly run states,” Trump said of Democratic lawmakers.
Trump also said he would support extending voting to include the weekend before Election Day and adding additional voting booths to ease crowding. “I would support all of that. That’s what you want to do,” Trump said. “I would be for opening more voting booths.
And the president said he’s OK with absentee voting. “I totally support that,” Trump responded. “That’s a great thing.”
