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You may never get election results: Trump warns against vote count

WION Web Team
Washington, United StatesUpdated: Aug 22, 2020, 10:29 AM IST
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Photograph:(Reuters)

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The US President Donald Trump has claimed the mail-in elections will be a huge embarassment for the country

The US President Donald Trump has claimed that the results of the Presidential elections, to be held on November 3, could take months.

The elections have been in the controversy due to the concerns raised by Trump for mail-in ballots, as he believes the local post office service — United States Postal Service (USPS) — is not ready to handle such a huge turnout of mail-in votes.

To add on to the controversy, Trump has now stated that according to him the election results cannot be deteremined for weeks, or months.

"You'll never have an election count on November 3," Trump said in a speech to the Council of National Policy, a conservative activist group.

"You're not going to be able to know the end of this election, in my opinion, for weeks, months, maybe never," he said.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the USPS is expecting almost 50 million votes to be cast by mail this year. However, the old organisation has received almost no support from the US President who claims this will be a huge embarassment for the country. "We're not prepared for this, 51 million ballots. It will be a tremendous embarrassment for the country," he said. "This is a very serious problem for a democracy."

Trump, who has been accused several times for colluding with Russia in the 2016 elections, believes his opposition party is stressing over relying on the USPS for voting day as it is allegedly an easy way to manipulate the 2020 elections.

While he is adamant on calling this to be a systemic problem, local voters and experts seem to believe this is his reaction to the poll resulkts that suggest he is trailing behind in the race against Joe Biden.

However,  Bill Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center has also stated a similar concern but due to cyberattacks. "We need to prepare as a nation that the election will not be decided on November 3," he said.

He added that it is not the USPS he is worried about, but the meddling by cyber criminals throughout the month on November, and especially on November 04 and 04. "I'm worried about ransomware attacks. I'm worried about cyberattacks. I'm worried about the inability of people to vote because of cyber penetrations and ransomware."