Donald Trump recently renewed his crusade against mail-in balloting, which means that some members of Congress aligned with the president are scrambling to toe the line. As The New Republic noted, one House GOP member took this in an unfortunate direction:
Republican lawmakers are apparently consorting with the dead in their search for a justifiable reason to nix mail-in ballots. Speaking with Fox Business Tuesday, Representative Jeff Van Drew claimed that he had spoken with ‘large numbers’ of deceased people who had received the voter ballots.
The New Jersey Republican, who last generated national headlines with some bizarre claims about aerial drones, largely stuck to familiar talking points, claiming that some unnamed people received “multiple” mail-in ballots, while other unnamed people have had ballots “sent to different addresses.”
But then the congressman went just a bit further.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew claims he’s spoken to “large numbers” of dead people who had mail ballots sent to them
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-08-19T21:29:46.435Z
“Other times, people who are passed away — these are real people I spoke to, large numbers of them, and it’s indicative of what happened around the country,” Van Drew added.
Right off the bat, it’s worth reemphasizing that there’s nothing wrong with the integrity of the existing vote-by-mail system, which has been in use without incident for many years in red and blue states. There are occasional reports about those who try to exploit the process illegally, but those people tend to get caught (and prosecuted) because of safeguards built into the system.
As for Van Drew’s suggestion that he’s spoken to “large numbers” of people who’ve “passed away,” I’m going to assume that the GOP lawmaker simply misspoke and that he wasn’t pitching an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Just as notable in this specific instance, however, is some local context. It was earlier this year when a political operative in New Jersey named Craig Callaway pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years in prison for submitting fraudulent mail-in ballots. While Callaway worked with Democratic and Republican candidates, among his clients was none other than Jeff Van Drew. The congressman didn’t face any accusations of wrongdoing in the case, though it is a complicating factor as he joins the White House offensive against postal balloting.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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