Tim Scott: Mail-in ballots ‘will work out just fine’

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who delivered the final speech of night one of the Republican National Convention, predicts mail-in ballots will work “just fine,” despite concerns raised by President Trump that mail-in balloting will open the door to election fraud.

Scott, in an interview with NBC News’s “Today,” said that in contrast to the president, he has “a lot of confidence in our electoral process.”

Scott told host Savannah Guthrie that he’s “confident that we will have fair elections across this country.”

“This process of mail-in ballots will work out just fine,” he said.

Scott, who played a leading role in putting together a Senate Republican police reform bill earlier this year, has emerged as an increasingly influential figure within the GOP.

His comments on mail-in ballots undercut Trump’s repeated claims that Democrats are pushing for expanded voting by mail as an attempt to steal the election.

Trump made the argument again Monday during a surprise appearance at the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., where he spoke for an hour after being officially nominated for reelection.

He accused Democrats of trying to steal the election by calling for more mail-in voting during the pandemic.

“What they’re doing is using COVID to steal an election,” he 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.”

Trump warned in March that the provisions Democratic leaders wanted to increase voting by mail would hurt Republicans’ future chances of winning elections.

“If you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” he told “Fox & Friends.”

Speaking to reporters and supporters at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., Trump declared: “Universal mail-in voting is going to be catastrophic. It’s going to make our country a laughingstock all over the world. You can’t send out millions of ballots.”

Other Republicans have pushed back against Trump’s dire warnings about mail-in voting.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), a regular Trump critic, said earlier this month: “I don’t know of any evidence that voting by mail would increase voter fraud.”