During an interview aired on Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “11th Hour,” 2020 Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden called on secretaries of state to plan for having remote voting in the 2020 elections.
Biden said, “[T]here would be no rationale for eliminating or delaying the election. It may be virtual.”
Nestled among the 12 titles and 880 pages of the $2.2 trillion “Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act of 2020,” approved unanimously by the Senate late March 25, is a paragraph sending $400 million to state governments “to help prepare for the 2020 election.”
America’s electoral obsession isn’t Russian meddling anymore. It’s ballot-harvesting, a long-disputed practice implicated in fraud that’s come to the fore with the nationwide embrace of absentee voting in recent years — and especially in last month’s midterms.
A group of Democratic senators led by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) introduced legislation on Wednesday to promote mail-in and early voting to decrease the spread of the coronavirus.
The Natural Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act (NDEBA) would ensure voters have 20 days of early voting in all states, require that all mail-in ballots submitted during 21 days leading to an election be counted, and ensure that all voters have the option to request absentee ballots.
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) on Wednesday asked state lawmakers to authorize all-mail elections in the months of August and November, citing health concerns stemming from the United States’ ongoing fight against the spread of the coronavirus.
Texas Democrats are urging the Texas Secretary of State to allow mail-in ballots for the upcoming May 2 and May 26 elections over concerns people won’t come out to vote because of the coronavirus.
Former Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton called on Congress to “make voting by mail the norm” with “free postage” as a result of public health concerns due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.
Arizona violated the Voting Rights Act by barring voters from delivering the early ballots of neighbors, friends and others to polling places, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.
The policy against so-called “ballot harvesting” disproportionately affects American Indian, Hispanic and African American voters, a majority of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said.
Significantly, four of the states with voter over-registrations–Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, and Colorado—are important battleground states that will figure prominently in the presidential election later this year. An unusually high voter registration rate suggests a jurisdiction may not be removing voters who have died or who have moved elsewhere, as required by federal law, according to Judicial Watch.
The acting secretary of Homeland Security is taking aim at new laws in New York and New Jersey that allow immigrants to get driver’s licenses without proof they are in the U.S. legally, and restrict data sharing with federal authorities.
