Vote-By-Mail

"President Trump’s repeated requests to his followers to commit felonies are felony crimes themselves because he is inciting the commission of those crimes," said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of the election watchdog organization Common Cause. "You cannot test election integrity rules by breaking them any more than you can rob a bank to make sure your money is safe."

Americans expect and deserve more from their President than statements urging his supporters to commit a felony by voting for him twice in the coming election. President Trump’s repeated requests to his followers to commit felonies are felony crimes themselves because he is inciting the commission of those crimes. And if the last several years have taught us anything, it is that some Trump followers will do virtually anything Trump recommends including taking unproven, unapproved, and potentially dangerous medications he has recommended for COVID-19.

Acknowledging problems in the Massachusetts election, Pamela Wilmot, the executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts, nevertheless attributed the high primary turnout to the state’s shift toward voting by mail. “Compared to the problems we’ve seen in other states, it really was a relatively smaller percentage of the voters that faced these issues,” she said, adding that Massachusetts had benefited from a decline in coronavirus infection rates. Partly as a result, she said, “we did not experience a poll worker shortage.”

“President Trump and Postmaster General DeJoy’s continued attempts to try to rig the election by undermining the USPS received a strong bipartisan warning today: don’t mess with the USPS,” Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, said in a statement Saturday. “As the nation continues to suffer from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, a robust and dependable USPS is needed more than ever.”

"What he’s laying the groundwork for is for his supporters to believe that the election is not properly conducted so they rally behind him when or if he challenges the results,” predicted Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause.

Washington, D.C. — August 22, 2020. Today the House of Representatives passed the Delivering for America Act, H.R. 8015 to halt changes to U.S. Postal Service operations and provide $25 billion in emergency funding during the COVID-19 pandemic. Common Cause’s President, Karen Hobert Flynn released the following statement: “We applaud the House of Representatives for standing up for the millions of Americans who rely on the U.S. Postal Service every day and passing the Delivering for America Act, H.R. 8015 to reverse changes to operations and provide $25 billion in funding during the pandemic. With tens of millions of Americans expected to vote by mail this year, it is appalling that the Trump administration would try to suppress our vote by hampering the USPS. Many communities and groups greatly depend on the USPS: seniors and people with disabilities for their social security benefits and prescription medications; rural and Native communities who lack other affordable delivery options; Americans who lack Internet connectivity; workers for their paychecks; veterans for medicines and VA benefits; and small businesses to ship their products to customers.”