Voting & Elections

"New York did not have any infrastructure or an expanded absentee program. So the Board of Elections had to completely revise the entire way in which they were approaching absentee ballots in six weeks," Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York, a nonpartisan good government organization, told ABC News.

Americans expect and deserve more from their President in the midst of a pandemic and an economic crisis than a photo op and phony posturing at a golf club. Unwilling and unable to negotiate with Congress to deliver a relief package to a nation reeling from COVID-19, President Trump resorted to unconstitutional half measures that will do little to address the serious issues facing the nation.

Recent actions from Facebook and Twitter to remove posts from President Trump containing COVID-19 misinformation show that the platforms have much more work to do to combat attacks on our democracy including the spread of election disinformation and voter suppression. Facebook works with fact-checking organizations to review and rate COVID-19 related content, uses tools to downrank COVID-19 misinformation, and directs users to authoritative sources on COVID-19 information. At the same time, Facebook refuses to fact-check political ads despite containing deceptive information that could suppress votes. Twitter has responded to the spread of COVID-19 misinformation by revising its policy on what is considered harmful content and adding labels to tweets with misinformation about the virus. Yet, Twitter has not taken adequate action to consistently enforce and expand its election integrity policies when it comes to tweets from the President that contain election disinformation.  

The right to vote is the very foundation of our democracy. Born of the horrible injustices and rampant voter suppression of the Jim Crow South, the Voting Rights Act, which turns 55 today, fully protected the right to vote for nearly five decades. That changed when the horribly misguided ruling by the United States Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder gutted the Voting Rights Act. In the wake of that decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, voter suppression has flourished and Americans have been systematically stripped of their ability to cast a ballot in numbers not seen since the Jim Crow era.

Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for nonprofit group Common Cause, testified at the hearing that President Trump's comments about election security have swayed public perception. "We have seen already that the president's rhetoric is affecting the confidence that voters have both in vote-by-mail particularly and also in elections in general," Albert said.

Let me be clear: Trump’s delayed election suggestion is nonsense. The president has no legal or constitutional authority to do that. Election Day is set by act of Congress and only Congress can change the date — even in an emergency. This year’s general election will happen on November 3, and there is no tweet by Trump that will change that. The timing of our election is not up for debate. The real question we need to be asking ourselves is not when we will vote, but instead how will we vote this November.