BOSTON (WHDH) - Secretary of State William Galvin pushed back against President Trump’s criticisms of the expanded vote-by-mail programs that many states have adopted this year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Massachusetts, ballots that are postmarked by Tuesday and received by local election officials no later than 5 p.m. on Friday can still be counted in the general election.
Trump argued that allowing states to count ballots after Election Day “can only lead to one thing and that’s very bad.”
Galvin called these comments “appalling, disturbing, and really criminal.”
He added that for years Massachusetts has allowed ballots of military personnel overseas to be counted for up to 10 days after an election as long as they were postmarked by Election Day.
“To suggest that somehow this is criminal or this is improper or this is illegal is disgraceful and criminal,” Galvin said during a press conference on Monday. “These are people who serve our country.”
In Texas, a federal judge rejected a Republican effort to throw out more than 100,000 ballots because they were cast by voters who drove up in their cars.
Election lawyer Dennis Newman, who represented former Vice President Al Gore in the infamous hanging chads presidential election in Florida in 2000, says he considers tactics like that to be voter suppression.
“They’re trying to put down the vote, suppress the vote where they won’t do well,” he said.
Galvin said that Massachusetts should have election results on Tuesday night, but that they won’t be official until the late-arriving ballots are counted.
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