In an interview with CBS News' Nicole Sganga, Attorney General Todd Blanche claimed mail-in voting carried a greater risk of fraud than in-person voting with ID. When asked what evidence he had to support his statement, he responded, "Well, it's common sense."
Page B2From§Eachthe early evening edition — 14 September 2026
Mail Ballot Order Defended With 'Common Sense,' Enforced With Alleged Lawbreaking, Unresolved As Midterms Near
“"Common sense" is what people say when they don't have the number — my uncle used the same line to explain why he doesn't wear a seatbelt. The Attorney General couldn't produce one fact for "more mail fraud," but DHS sent agents out chasing it anyway, and now a whistleblower says those agents broke state law doing it. The order's been stuck in court since August, the ballots are already moving, and the only people not in a hurry here are the judges.”
“Look, common sense used to be good enough to convict a jury before everybody got obsessed with "data" — the Attorney General's talking like a normal person, not a bureaucrat, and that shouldn't be controversial. Sure, a whistleblower says some agents maybe stepped over a state line or two, but you don't get a clean kitchen without a few dishes breaking — did I just compare federal agents to dishes? Let me back up: the fraud's out there, we just haven't needed to prove it yet, which is sort of the whole point.”
The receipts
President Donald Trump’s push to impose new restrictions on mail-in voting before the November midterm elections is running into an increasingly unforgiving deadline as ballots begin moving through the mail and the Supreme Court weighs whether to allow the administration to proceed. A second federal judge blocked the U.S. Postal Service…
Federal agents may have broken state laws after the Department of Homeland Security began surging personnel for what it called the Unlawful Voter Initiative, a federal whistleblower alleges.
· 'Democracy Is Under Attack': Civil Rights Lawsuit Aims to Block Trump Assault on Mail-In Voting from the morgue, 27 Aug 2026
· Trump Administration Launches Hunt For Noncitizen Voter Fraud Before Midterms from the morgue, 2 Sep 2026
· Trump 'Laying the Groundwork for Election Meddling' With DHS Hunt for Noncitizen Voters from the morgue, 2 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.