Donald Trump spends a lot of time and energy trying to figure out how to 'block' mail-in ballots, says administration insider

• President Donald Trump is obsessed with mail-in ballots and how to "block" Americans casting their vote by post, reported The Washington Post on Saturday.
• Trump has claimed that the US Postal Service shouldn't receive more money so people cannot cast their ballots by post.
• The president has claimed that mail-in voting enables widespread fraud, a claim denied by election officials.
• Democrats, including former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, are accusing the president of seeking to suppress votes with his attacks on mail-in voting.

President Donald Trump is fixated on mail-in ballots and spends considerable time trying to figure out how to "block" such voting, a senior administration source told The Washington Post.

According to the source, the president spends considerable time "reading news reports and other materials about mail-in ballots, talking about the topic with his advisers and thinking about how to block such voting."

The Post reports that Trump recently met with congressional Republicans to air his concerns, citing a recent election fraud case in New Jersey.Election experts told NPR is very rare and highlighted the effectiveness of existing measures to guard against fraud.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews defended Trump in a statement to the Post, and said he's working "to ensure the security and integrity of our elections."

"All Americans deserve an election system that is fair and balanced, and President Trump is highlighting that Democrats' plan for universal mail-out voting would lead to fraud," Matthews said

In recent weeks Trump has stepped up his criticism of mail-in ballots, with a huge surge in the number of Americans casting their votes by post expected this year amid the coronavirus crisis.

Traditionally, mail-in voting is seen to benefit the Democratic Party more than Republicans, but some recent studies have questioned that assumption.

The president has claimed that mail-in ballots are exposed to widespread fraud and has refused to grant a funding increase for the US Postal Service, demanded by Democrats as part of a coronavirus relief package.

Experts say that concerns that mail-in votes could be tampered with on a massive scale are groundless. Democrats have accused the president of seeking to delegitimize thousands of votes, or suppress voting, to fix the election.

The Post, in its report, chronicles Trump's longstanding hostility to the USPS, including his claims, that voting fraud resulted in Hillary Clinton's victory over him in the popular vote in the 2016 election.

It also explores his allegation that the service gave preferential treatment to Amazon, which is owned by Jeff Bezos. Trump has attacked Bezos over the coverage of his administration by The Washington Post, which Bezos owns.