Thursday on CNBC’s “The Exchange,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said Congress would fund vote-by-mail because it is safer amid the coronavirus pandemic.
When asked about President Donald Trump’s tweet floating an election delay, Klobuchar said, “The president is doing a disservice to our democracy. I say if you don’t want to make it political, let’s look at what some of the Republicans have been saying. Secretaries of state across the country, including the secretary of state in Ohio, a Republican actually said that saying vote by mail is fraudulent is basically, to paraphrase, doing a disservice. You have Republican governors in Maryland, in Ohio, in New Hampshire that have fully embraced and asked for more assistance when it goes into this election. The fact that Mitt Romney saying that vote by mail has worked great in Utah.”
She continued, “I think we’re going to have more funding for vote-by-mail people shouldn’t have to choose between putting their ballots in a mailbox or having to go to the hospital and getting sick.”
She added, “The president cannot delay the election. The election is set by law. He cannot take the Constitution and our laws into his own hands. That’s why I think you’re seeing bipartisan support across the country for funding for elections when we’re going from 5% vote by mail in states like New York, to well over 60%. Of course, that’s going to involve some delays. It’s going to involved needing funding for postage and envelopes. It’s that simple. But it’s a hell of a lot safer way to vote than what happened in Wisconsin, where people were wearing homemade masks and garbage bags in the rain and 70 of them got coronavirus. Guess who votes by mail? The president of the United States in the comfort of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, with the mail-in ballot that he gets from Pensacola, in his slippers, I don’t know about the slippers part I made that up.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN