Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, and Michelle Obama’s nonprofit voter registration group, When We All Vote, is partnering with the hyper-partisan MoveOn.org to push mail-in voting for the 2020 election.
MoveOn revved up its campaign with Hanks, Wilson, and Obama with a message to its extensive email list calling for followers and supporters to sign a petition that the left-wing activist group promises to send to Congress.
“Join Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson by adding your name to fight for safe and fair elections,” the group tells email recipients.
MoveOn goes on to claim that the coronavirus has prompted the need for a countrywide expansion of voting by mail.
“With the threat of Covid-19 looming over the November election, Congress must act to ensure every American has the ability to cast their ballot safely and without unnecessary risk,” MoveOn says at its petition page. “Tell your elected officials to expand access to vote-by-mail, early voting, and online voter registration.”
The group goes on to falsely claim that voters put their lives at risk to vote in Wisconsin’s primary this year, writing, “During the Wisconsin primary this spring, thousands of voters risked their health and defied a stay-at-home order to exercise their right to vote.”
This is a falsehood. Voters in the Dairy State were not at undue risk of contracting COVID-19. Indeed, according to reports, Wisconsin’s rate of identified cases went down in the two weeks after the primary election. And in the weeks after the primary, the state was only able to identify 52 voters out of 400,000 that had the virus — and it was impossible to determine if they even contracted the virus on Election Day.
With the new campaign, Obama’s “When We All Vote” nonprofit and MoveOn are calling for expanded access to vote-by-mail, expanded early In-person voting, and expanded online voter registration.
“Vote-by-mail could be the only safe and secure option for some Americans,” MoveOn insists. “States must offer multiple options for requesting, receiving, and returning mail-in ballots while maintaining the security of our voting system; multiple ways to request mail-in ballots, including online, in person, by phone, and by mail; and safe and secure options for returning ballots by expanding deadlines for mail-in ballots to be requested and returned.”
Those who oppose an all mail-in voting system are quick to note that people voting at home and mailing in their ballot would, by necessity, be completely unmonitored, and such a system is open to reams of fake votes being produced and sent in the mail to authorities. The ballots can also be stolen or lost.
Recently elections expert Hans von Spakovsky also said, “it is, unfortunately, easy to not just engage in fraud in those kinds of elections, but it’s also easy for voters to be intimidated [in their homes as they fill out ballots]. And that’s a cause for concern and should be a cause for concern for anyone interested in having an election process that is fair and has good security too.”
Last month, Michelle Obama made a big push for vote by mail during a virtual voter registration drive that featured Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, and former Obama administration advisor Valerie Jarrett.
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