Former homeland security chiefs contradict Trump’s election fraud claims: No ‘widespread fraud’

Four former Homeland Security Secretaries who served under Republican and Democratic administrations on Thursday teamed up to tell voters that there is no “no real prospect” of voter fraud taking place in this election.

In an interview with NBC’s TODAY Show, former secretaries Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, who both served under President George W. Bush, and Janet Napolitano and Jeh Johnson, who served under President Barack Obama, expressed confidence in the integrity of the looming vote despite skepticism from President Trump.

“There is no real prospect of widespread fraud in the election,” Mr. Chertoff said.

“There are foreign powers who are gleeful at seeing how we have some domestic actors like Donald Trump working to undermine the unity [of America].”

Mr. Ridge explained that he is more concerned about “anxiety surrounding the election” than the security of the vote.

While Mr. Johnson said that incidents of real voter fraud “are very, very low in connection with mail-in balloting.” “Vote yourself and have confidence in the results,” he said.

Their comments come a week after the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence warned foreign adversaries not to meddle in next week’s elections.

The intelligence community has concluded that Russia meddled in the 2016 election and is widely believed to do so this year. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said last week that Iran and Russia have accessed voter information and taken “specific actions to influence public opinion” about the elections, a claim both countries deny.

Mr. Trump himself has also questioned the legitimacy of the election and has claimed, without evidence, that it will be “rigged.”

“This is going to be a fraud like you’ve never seen,” he said of mail-in voting last month. Evidence has not been presented that voter fraud is taking place.

Mr. Chertoff hit back at the president’s accusations and told the network, “to be crystal clear, there is no real prospect of widespread fraud in the election.”

He said Mr. Trump’s claims “are not consistent with American values and with constitutional values.”

“There’s no history of that happening,” he said. “And everybody is very much on guard to make sure there isn’t any monkeying around with the voting process.”