Mail dumped in ditch, pushed by White House as evidence of voter fraud, did not contain Wisconsin ballots

Wisconsin elections officials did not know if other states’ ballots were found in the trays

There were no Wisconsin absentee ballots amoung several trays of mail found discarded in a ditch in Wisconsin, an incident that Donald Trump previously touted as evidence of the pitfalls of mail-in voting.  

Last week, three trays of mail were found in a ditch in Greenville, Wisconsin. The Outagamie County Sheriff's Office reported at the time that there were several absentee ballots amoung the discarded mail.  

A statement issued by the Wisconsin Elections Commission now casts doubt on that initial report.  

Meagan Wolfe, the director of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said that no Wisconsin ballots were found in the scrapped mail.  

Ms Wolfe was speaking specifically about Wisconsin ballots in her statement. She said she did not know if ballots from other states were found.  

The US Postal Service is investigating the incident.  

Mr Trump capitalised on the story when it first broke. During Tuesday's presidential debate, Mr Trump claimed that ballots were being dumped in creeks.

"There's fraud. They found them in creeks. They found some, just happened to have the name Trump just the other day in a wastepaper basket," Mr Trump said.  

When a reporter pushed White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on where the creek was located, she admitted that Mr Trump was referring to the Wisconsin ditch story.  

Mr Trump's "wastepaper basket" reference was in relation to a federal enquiry into nine discarded mail-in military ballots that were found in a county elections office in northeast Pennsylvania. Seven of the recovered ballots were votes for Mr Trump.  

However, the FBI said it found no evidence that the incident was a "coordinated" voter fraud campaign.  

Mr Trump has railed against mail-in voting for months.  

He has claimed - without evidence - that an election in which substantial numbers of Americans vote-by-mail will lead to massive voter fraud and has stated his intentions to question the results of the election as a result.