Sunday on “Full Court Press,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told host Greta van Susteren vote-by-mail would be in the next coronavirus stimulus legislation.
Pelosi said, “Well, let me stay a couple of things. First of all, I’m proud of our state of California. Jerry Brown, when he left, scores of billions of dollars of surplus. That’s all gone because of the virus. That’s all gone because of the virus. So, to those who make that charge about, ‘oh, they had problems before,’ it has nothing to do with that. This is strictly, what are your outlays for the coronavirus? What is your revenue loss for the coronavirus? That’s what has the support of Democratic and Republican governors across the country. It strictly about this, and it’s about nothing else. It has nothing to do with anything else in the budget of the governors. And we will come and our bill, also have funding for vote by mail, which we think is essential and supported by Republicans across the country. They like voting by mail. They have more of a habit of voting by mail.”
Van Susteren asked, “How our vote by mail and absentee voting different?”
Pelosi said, “This is related to COVID for the reason that we are trying to keep people at home, vote at home and the rest, vote by mail does one thing—I was a former chair of the California party, and our goal was to remove all obstacles to participation.”
She added, “This is an opportunity to remove obstacles of participation by calling upon the governing bodies to send a ballot to every registered voter by having same-day registration, by having adequate polling places for those who want to or need in person, but to reduce the number of people who will be gathering in such places on election day. We had some elections coming up soon. In the state of Wisconsin, they had a number of COVID cases that were immediately traced to people having to stand in line for a long time to vote, so this is not only the health of our democracy commits the health of our people, and it makes the argument, there are states like Oregon that have had vote by mail for a number of years, and they claim success, and it certainly pleases the people there.”
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