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US President Donald Trump‘s campaign has requested the first presidential debate ahead of November’s general election be rescheduled to early September. A letter from the president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, to the Commission on Presidential Debates, says voting in more than a dozen other states means several million voters will already have cast mailed-in ballots before the first scheduled debate on 29^th September. Giuliani wrote in a letter and said, “For a nation already deprived of a traditional campaign schedule because of the Covid-19 global pandemic, it makes no sense to also deprive so many Americans of the opportunity to see and hear the two competing visions for our country’s future before millions of votes have been cast”.

Giuliani called the current schedule as an outdated dinosaur and not reflective of voting realities in 2020. Point to be noted that several states have prepared for demand for absentee ballots among voters looking to prevent coming into contact with the coronavirus at the ballot box. However, an impeded US Postal Service and the president’s ongoing attacks against mail-in voting, including baseless claims about mass voter fraud. President Trump appeared on Tuesday to reverse the course on mail-in ballots in the swing state of Florida. He claimed the state’s Republican governors better prepared the state for absentee turnout. Moreover, governors in 25 other states and many election officials are also Republicans.

It is noteworthy that GOP officials also have feared that the president’s rhetoric against absentee voting could be polarizing to his own supporters. Giuliani said, “The solution is easy, add an additional debate in early September before the first ballots are sent out in North Carolina on 4^th September, or move up the final debate currently scheduled for 22^nd October into the first week in September 2020”. The campaign has alleged Democratic challenger Joe Biden of trying to skip out of the debates. Trump campaign is looking to lure the former vice president into a public gaffe. Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said, “Donald Trump is continually trying to insert his choice of friendly moderators, now including one who just published an op-ed offering the case for Trump’s re-election”.