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House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi has stated that she wants a vote by mail provision in the next COVID-19 bill. This, Pelosi argues, will help to keep the virus from depressing voter turnout and allow a fair election in November.
Pelosi made the statements on Wednesday, estimating that it would likely cost between $2 billion and $4 billion to ensure an expansion of voting by mail was in place in time for the general election in November. “Vote by mail is so important to … our democracy so that people have access to voting and not be deterred, especially at this time, by the admonition to stay home,” Pelosi said to reporters on Wednesday.
The House Majority Leader noted that Democrats were able to secure $200 million to that end in the most recent COVID-19 relief bill. However, she argues, this isn’t enough to ensure that everyone who wants to will be able to vote from home.
Trump, after hearing of Pelosi’s statement, argued that voting by mail would hurt Republicans. His reasoning likely included the common knowledge that Republican policies tend to lose popular votes. Trump himself lost the popular vote in 2016 to opponent Hillary Clinton, but the Electoral College system ensured his victory.
Pelosi, however, dismissed Trump’s fears. “When I was chair of the California Democratic party many years ago, the Republicans always prevailed in the absentee ballots,” she told reporters. “They know how to do this.”
As millions of Americans are staying home to practice social distancing and worried of things like Humira Medicare cost, a chaotic 2020 election year has been disrupted. Several states that were set to have primaries this Spring have either switched to entirely mail-in voting. Others have pushed their primaries back considerably, to May or June.
This has been a hiccup in a process that was trending towards awarding centrist former Vice President Joe Biden the Democratic nomination. His opponent, progressive senator Bernie Sanders, lags him by just over 300 pledged delegates. That’s a wide gap that could still be closed by the roughly half of America that has yet to vote in the primary.
Pelosi’s insistence on more funding for a national vote-by-mail expansion highlights a fear that the COVID-19 pandemic could spill out past this Spring and continue to affect the public through to the Fall and Winter months. Meanwhile, a stir-crazy country is eager for the social distancing measures to come to an end.
