The increased questioning of the integrity of postal voting, without any evidence being presented that there are any significant problems, seems to have its origins in the Trump campaign's activity in Georgia. They have repeatedly made claims about postal voter fraud, particularly among the black community there, on a scale to have an impact on results. These claims have been investigated time and time again, including by Republican elected officials in the state, and found to be totally baseless.
What has happened is that the Russians appear to be continuing to push the claims hard through their disinformation network and generalising them so that postal voting is being smeared in every democracy and, what concerned nobody previously, becomes amplified by useful idiocy on social media. This thread provides a good example of how a falsehood, if repeated often enough and appealing to a person's existing prejudices, can be accepted as an absolute fact by some.
We may be at the foothills of this attempt to chip away at confidence in the democratic process. A Trump win in the American election which would probably be followed by a Russian victory in the war in Ukraine and an increase in confidence among those states hostile to our way of life. With most western government's struggling with slow economic growth and huge debt burdens, democratically elected government's will probably have to deliver lots of bad news and this looks set to be a very difficult period for us all.
Gordon Southwell ● 346d