Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) on Thursday took to social media to call on the media to not report any election results on the night of November 3rd.
Griswold wrote in a series of tweets:
Our democracy cannot be held hostage to a ratings race. If you care about our democracy, you will protect it. Full Stop. We are in the middle of a pandemic and the President of the United States has telegraphed that he may claim victory on election night, even when millions of ballots will not have been counted. Indisputable facts: 1. This is no normal election. A record number of Americans will be voting by mail. 2. Election “night” will be dramatically different than ever before.
We need an UNPRECEDENTED plan from the media for how they will cover an unprecedented election. That is why I am calling on national media networks to pledge to #PressPause for democracy and: 1. Make NO projections on election night 2. Announce NO election results on election night. In the coming days, I will ask election administrators, voting rights organizations, media ethicists, corporations, religious leaders, and all concerned Americans to stand with me in demanding media executives #PressPause for democracy.
Griswold’s plea comes after the Democrat official made headlines when it was revealed that her office mailed postcards to non-citizens and dead people encouraging them to register to vote in order to cast ballots in the election. Griswold mailed the cards to a handful of individuals who are ineligible to vote, according to CBS4.
“Sounds really nice except my mother has been dead four years and she hasn’t lived, voted, owned property, worked, or done anything other than visit Colorado since 1967,” Karen Anderson told the local news outlet.
State officials defended the practice of mailing the cards to ineligible people, claiming a vast majority of recipients are allowed to vote.
“Yes, it’s true that occasionally it will go to a person that it shouldn’t go to, someone who’s already registered or somebody that’s below the age of 18, but the vast, vast majority go to the people who are eligible and then many of them follow-up and become registered voters and they get their ballot in the mail and can vote in our election,” Judd Choate, director the secretary of state’s elections division, said in a statement.
In August, Griswold lashed out at President Donald Trump over his repeated criticism of voting by mail due to potential election fraud.
“The president has shown a degree of disrespect to this country that is just un-American,” she said. “There is something that we should all be able to agree on and that is well-functioning elections.”