Trump: Dems Using Virus Fears to 'Steal an Election'

President Donald Trump is accusing Democrats of using voters' concerns about COVID-19 to steal the upcoming presidential election.

Trump told delegates at the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Monday that the only way Democrats can win is "if this is a rigged election."

"What they’re doing is using COVID to steal an election," Trump said. "They’re using COVID to defraud the American people, all of our people, of a fair and free election. We can’t do that."

Until he won, Trump also warned that the 2016 election was going to be rigged.

He says Americans know how to keep themselves safe from the coronavirus and can go to the polls, eliminating the need to mail in their ballots. He said, without providing evidence, that that creates fraud.

Voter fraud has proved exceedingly rare. The Brennan Center for Justice in 2017 ranked the risk of ballot fraud at 0.00004% to 0.0009%, based on studies of past elections.

Trump says other votes will be “harvested” by people going door-to-door to collect ballots that voters have not submitted. In addition, he says some states are not verifying signatures on ballots. He did not provide evidence for those claims.