AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
- Former Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg slammed President Donald Trump’s campaign for “turning to the idea of suppressing voters” in an interview with CNN on Sunday.
- Buttigieg cited the “move to try to disenfranchise 100,000 Texans” and “maneuvers to try to make it harder to get absentee ballots” as examples of the Trump campaign’s efforts to suppress voters.
- With record numbers of voters casting their ballots by mail ahead of Election Day, the president and his campaign have claimed against widespread evidence the process is prone to fraud and called for this year’s results to be based on what is counted by the end of November 3.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Former Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg criticized President Donald Trump’s campaign for “turning to the idea of suppressing voters” in the election.
“Unfortunately, it seems that Republicans have given up, at least Donald Trump’s campaign, has really given up on persuading voters and is instead turning to the idea of suppressing voters,” Buttigieg said on CNN on Sunday.
Buttigieg cited the “move to try to disenfranchise 100,000 Texans” and “maneuvers to try to make it harder to get absentee ballots” as examples of the Trump campaign resorting to voter suppression.
“It is going to be a stain on that campaign forever that they thought part of their strategy to win was to make it harder for American citizens, including patriots serving overseas, to have their voices heard,” Buttigieg told “State of the Union” host Jake Tapper.
Trump campaign spokesperson Tim Murtaugh responded to Buttiegieg’s remark in a statement to Business Insider, saying “the only thing suppressing Democrat voters is Joe Biden’s terrible candidacy.”
On Monday, a Texas federal judge will hold an emergency hearing on a lawsuit filed by Republican plaintiffs on whether Harris County should reject votes coming in from drive-through voting. If these votes are blocked, a total of 127,000 ballots could be rejected, CNN reported.
Meanwhile, some have pointed out concerns over whether absentee ballots or mail-in votes will be counted in time.
Business Insider’s Madison McVan previously reported that in Minnesota a court ruling on Thursday decided late absentee ballots must be separated from all other votes, which has led to confusion and fear for voting rights advocates over whether these mail-in votes will count.
In October, a federal judge in Texas blocked the state governor’s order to reduce mail-in ballot drop-off locations, which if passed, would have required voters to travel extensively to drop-off their ballots, Business Insider’s John L. Dorman previously reported.
—CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) November 1, 2020
Corey Lewandowski, a senior advisor for Trump’s campaign, denied the campaign had deployed any voter suppression tactics on “Fox News Sunday,” where he told host Chris Wallace that instances like the campaign suing for voter signatures in Clark County, Nevada, were “about the integrity of the process.”
In the interview that was also reported by Politico, Lewandowski echoed concerns that have been repeatedly floated by the campaign and the president about states counting votes through and after Election Day, despite the process being common in several states that have previously employed mail-in voting.
“The concern is when you have some states that don’t require a postage mark on there, we don’t know when they were filled out, they don’t require signature verification and some states they’ll be counting nine or 10 days after the election,” he said. “I think in the most industrialized country in the world we can do better than that, Chris.”
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