Thursday on MSNBC, “The Last Word,” 2018 Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams said despite President Donald Trump’s paranoia about mail-in voting, it was “safe” and “accessible.”
O’Donnell said, “I wanted to get your view of what we learned about mail-in voting this week and the surge in voter turn-out that some states experienced with it.”
Abrams said, “One, we know it works despite the protestations of the Republican Party and the Paranoia of Donald Trump, we know it works. It is safe. It is accessible. But the challenge we have is that number two, it has to be scaled. We are seeing unprecedented participation in our elections via mail-in ballots. We know that 34 states allow no excuses. Sixteen states require an excuse. But every state is going to have to have it. We know that the COVID virus is going to ramp up again in the fall, and we haven’t even made it out of the first wave. That means we have to be ready to allow mail-in voting for every voter that chooses to use it.”
O’Donnell asked, “What is the situation with mail-in voting in what we consider the battleground states, the states that could end up deciding this election?”
Abrams said, “It is a mix. Mail-in voting is permitted in Georgia with no excuses. We just, unfortunately, had a debacle in terms of actually managing the process, and we need to scale it up. We know that in Wisconsin, Wisconsin is one of a handful of states that requires a signature or a witness in order to— sorry, requires a witness or notary to send in your ballots. But voter participation is up dramatically. And mail-in voting is not a Democratic or Republican way of voting. But when it is convenient, we know that more Democrats are participating, and that’s shifting the landscape for the outcome in November.”
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