Daily US Times: On Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s election campaign sued the state of New Jersey over its decision to use a hybrid voting model for the upcoming general election in which all residents will be mailed a ballot, leaving it up to the voters to decide if they would like to vote by mail or in person.
Donald J. Trump for President, the New Jersey Republican State Committee and the Republican National Committee brought the lawsuit asking the court to overturn Democratic Governor Phil Murphy’s executive order instituting the new rules that aim to give voters the option of avoiding voting in person during the coronavirus pandemic.
The US President himself has repeatedly claimed that expanding mail-in voting options will result in fraud. But in reality, there is no widespread voter fraud in US elections, and nonpartisan experts say neither party automatically benefits when states expand access to mail-in voting.
The lawsuit filed by Trump’s campaign alleges that the executive order usurps the legislature’s authority to decide when and how elections are held. The lawsuit also alleges that the “system will violate eligible citizens’ right to vote” and that “fraudulent and invalid votes dilute the votes of honest citizens and deprive them of their right to vote in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
Voting by mail is becoming an increasingly popular option due to the pandemic, since many voters may prefer not to wait in long lines at polling stations. New Jersey will be the ninth state, along with Washington, DC, to mail all registered voters ballots for the November 3 election.
On Friday, Murphy told that New Jersey was extending the model of voting they used during the primary.
He said: “We mailed ballots to folks who were registered in either party. We mailed applications to those who weren’t. And we also provided in-person voting capacity at least 50% in each county and at least one location in each municipality. It was a success. Not perfect, but overwhelmingly a success.”
Murphy also said his state learned some lessons since the primary elections adding that there will “have more presence of secure drop boxes, make sure there is that physical in voting capacity, and as it relates to mail-in ballots, the good news is in a general election, it doesn’t matter what party you’re in, everybody gets a ballot.”
Murphy said for those who want to vote in person, they will “do what we call ‘provisional voting’ because the folks won’t necessarily know at the voting location whether or not whether you actually already mailed a ballot in. That’s what we did in the primary. Little bit more cumbersome, but it works.”
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