By Daniel Dale, CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump is pushing for new restrictions on mail-in voting. To sell his proposal, he is telling lies.
Trump has been making false claims about mail-in voting since the 2020 campaign that was held amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, as he asks Congress to pass a bill that would ban mail-in voting in federal elections except for situations involving disability, illness, travel, or service in the military, he’s repeating some of the same false claims that have been debunked over the last six years.
Here’s a fact check of some of the president’s recent falsehoods on the subject.
It’s not true that the US is the only country that uses mail-in voting
Over and over this month, Trump has falsely claimed that the US is the only country in the world that uses mail-in ballots.
“You know, brought to my attention today that we’re the only country that doesn’t — that does mail-in voting,” Trump claimed in a speech on Monday. “You know, there’s not a country in the world that does mail-in ballots anymore,” he claimed in another speech on March 9.
In reality, dozens of countries allow some or all voters to vote by mail. The list includes Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany and Switzerland.
We don’t know what, if anything, was actually brought to Trump’s attention on Monday, but this was not a new lie from him. He has told it on multiple occasions since last year.
It’s not true that a Jimmy Carter commission called for a ban on mail-in voting
Trump continues to falsely describe what Jimmy Carter, the late Democratic president, said about mail-in voting.
Last week, Trump said that a commission Carter formed after his presidency “came out and said very strongly: ‘No mail-in ballots.’” At a March 9 press conference, Trump said of the commission: “Frankly, I think it’s probably the best thing Jimmy Carter did. He said, ‘You can’t have mail-in voting because it’s inherently dishonest.’”
In reality, neither Carter nor an election reform commission Carter co-chaired said “no mail-in ballots” or declared mail-in ballots “inherently dishonest.”
It’s true that the commission was generally skeptical of mail-in voting. Its 2005 report said that “absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud” and are “vulnerable to abuse in several ways.”
But the commission did not call for a ban on mail-in voting. Its report highlighted an example of successful mail-only elections, sayi