Pelosi Confirms Next Relief Bill Will Be Used To Push Vote by Mail
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is looking at a future round of coronavirus response legislation to fund Democrats’ plan to force Americans to accept mail-it-in elections.
During a Friday interview on MSNBC, Pelosi said “much more than” $400 million will be in the next bill so that “every person registered to vote” will receive a ballot at home.
Pelosi used the interview to attack President Donald Trump and his reluctance to pump more money into the U.S. Postal Service.
“The president wants to privatize the Post Office,” she said, about the 6:25 mark.
“The post office has over 90 percent favorability among the American people. They depend on the post office as a public institution. Seniors now are getting — they have always been getting their medicine by mail for a long time now and now even more urgently. People are buying things that are telemarketing and the rest, and they’re being delivered by the post office.
“So at this time, any time, it’s a bad idea. It’s what they’re about, privatization, privatization, privatization. Let someone else go make money off someone that should be a public service for the American people. We will have to have that fight.
“We tried to get funding for the post office in the CARES one bill. We had some money in a bipartisan way, but the president, I understand, personally rejected it,” Pelosi said.
Pelosi then tried to connect Trump’s opposition to more postal spending with her demand that vote-by-mail become law, according to a transcript of the interview posted on Pelosi’s website.
“But let me tell you another reason why he may be against it. We have to save the lives and livelihood of the American people. We also have to save our liberty – the life of our democracy,” she said.
“Voting by mail is central to this in any event, but at the time of the coronavirus, very essential. We had $400 million in CARES 1. We have to add much more than that in CARES 2, so that people can vote by mail,” she said.
Pelosi then trashed the Supreme Court for not adhering to her agenda by allowing Wisconsin’s primary election to go ahead earlier this month.
“When the Supreme Court, acting like party hacks, said that the state of Wisconsin had to vote on that day and limited the importance of voting by mail, they were doing a Republican agenda.
“But the fact is, is that having those people vote at that time was as if we invited them all to the Mardi Gras, probably caused more infections. Sad to say. People were standing in line for a very long time, keeping social distancing, but nonetheless, having to be out when they should be home,” she said.
“So, this is about that as well. This issue of vote by mail and also saying every person who’s registered to vote should receive a ballot and that we should have same-day registration for those who have not registered to vote, opening the process,” she said.
Pelosi is supported by former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who has tweeted her support for voting by mail.
People shouldn’t be forced to choose between their health and their vote.
Make sure your legislators know you support vote by mail options for this fall. https://t.co/fxuxmglu7l
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) April 24, 2020
Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel pushed back against the vote-by-mail concept in a commentary piece published by Fox News.
“Imagine an election where a ballot is sent to a person regardless of eligibility, signed by someone else, picked up and delivered by a campaign operative, and still counted. If Democrats got their way, that is what would happen in Nevada this June, and nationwide in November,” she wrote.
“Democrats have sued Nevada in an attempt to block the state from enforcing election laws on the books in their upcoming primary. Their demands? Nevada must suspend its prosecution of ballot harvesters, where the practice is illegal, and refuse to allow election officials to verify signatures on ballots, contrary to state law. They claim this basic check to see whether a ballot is from the same voter who signed up to vote is ‘not needed to ensure the integrity of the election,'” she wrote.
“This is the Democrats’ standard for ‘integrity’ in elections,” she wrote.
“Democrats are using ‘social distancing’ as an excuse to allow campaign operatives to traffic in ballots, and stop the enforcement of crucial voter integrity laws,” she wrote.
“It is not really about social distancing. If it were, Democrats would not want to put their campaign operatives at risk by sending them door-to-door to handle thousands of ballots. The only thing Democrats are consistent on is their mission to gut voting integrity. And their hypocrisy,” she wrote.
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