Former President Donald Trump bizarrely claimed that “paper is more sophisticated now than computers” after voting Tuesday in Florida — and repeated his false assertion that U.S. states don’t use paper ballots.
Trump twice brought up the subject of paper ballots while speaking to reporters outside a polling place in Palm Beach.
“You know that paper is more sophisticated now than computers,” Trump said while standing next to wife Melania Trump. “It’s watermarked paper. You cannot — it’s, it’s — you cannot. It’s unbelievable what happens with it. There’s nothing you can do to cheat, and of course, you have practically nothing to run.”
Trump, 78, also claimed, “I’m hearing in Pennsylvania they won’t have an answer till two or three days from now.”
“A thing like that should never happen. This election should be over. They spend all this money on machines, and frankly, if they use paper ballots, it would be over by 10 o’clock,” he said, appearing weary after campaigning until early morning in battleground Michigan.
About 98% of all votes cast in this year’s presidential election will be recorded on paper, up from 93% in 2020, after the 2002 Help America Vote Act phased out the use of lever machines and punch cards, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
The nonpartisan group Verified Voting also says that 69.9% of registered voters in the U.S. live in places that use hand-marked paper ballots and 25.1% live in places that use electronic ballot-marking devices that create paper ballots.
Louisiana and three counties in Texas — which account for 1.4% of all registered voters — are the only places that use electronic voting machines that don’t create a paper trail, according to Verified Voting.
In Palm Beach County, Florida, where Trump voted, both methods are available, according to local TV station WPTV.
“Florida is a paper ballot state,” county Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory-Link told WPTV. “Everybody who is casting a vote in Florida, it doesn’t matter what county they’re in, they’re going to do that on a paper ballot.”
Trump has repeatedly called for the U.S. to adopt paper ballots, including during a Sunday rally in Pennsylvania and a Friday interview with podcaster Joe Rogan.
His claims about paper ballots Tuesday were among 15 false statements he made while speaking to reporters for 15 minutes, according to the Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” column.
