With the president raising fresh concerns with voting by mail and floating the idea of delaying the 2020 election, Gov. Charlie Baker on Thursday said that if the Civil War and two world wars didn’t stop elections, the coronavirus shouldn’t either.
“I think it’s critically important that the election that is scheduled for the fall in September and November happen,” Baker said, calling the law he signed earlier this month to expand mail-in voting “the right thing to do.”
President Donald Trump, in a series of Tweets Thursday, attacked the credibility of mail-in voting and suggested that maybe the fall election should be delayed.
Trump is running for re-election, and most polls show him trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden both nationally and in some key battleground states.
“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” Trump wrote in a message that was pinned to the top of his Twitter page.
Baker said Massachusetts successfully held municipal elections and special elections for “hotly contested” legislative seats during the pandemic.
In his hometown of Swampscott, the governor said the town reduced the number of polling locations, moved to bigger locations and spread everybody out. “It worked fine,” he said.
Registered voters across Massachusetts have received applications to request mail-in ballots and could begin voting in a matter of weeks as those ballots get printed and mailed to people’s homes ahead of the Sept. 1 primaries.
Votes can also participate through early, in-person voting, later this summer, or by showing up at the polls on election day.
“We’ve had elections in the midst of world wars. We’ve had an election in the midst of a civil war. We’ve had election in many times in this country during terrible, awful circumstances. But the elections need to happen, and there’s no reason why this one can’t happen,” Baker said.
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