The senator said his “biggest concern” with voter fraud is potential hacking of U.S. voting machines and systems, because fraudulent attempts to use voice-over mail can be prevented with physical ballots.
“I’ve heard some people say they think the reason the president does not want people to vote by post is that polls show that people who want to vote by post tend to vote for Vice President Biden. “I would like to vote in person for President Trump,” Romney said. “That this is a political calculation. But my own opinion is that we want people to vote.”
Romney said it was “essential” for the United States and the US president to “show that elections can be held in a free and fair manner.”
“We must do everything we can to ensure that people who want to vote have the opportunity to vote, and that is more important even than the outcome of the vote. We must uphold the principle of democracy,” he said.
Trump has repeatedly argued that broader mail-in-vote would lead to voter fraud, as more states look to expand mail-in-vote access amid the coronavirus pandemic. Studies have found that voter fraud is rare in U.S. elections, including in places where voting by mail is widespread.
The president has also claimed that more post-ballots would harm his reelection efforts, but non-partisan experts say no party automatically benefits from voting for mail-ins.
In his discussion with the Sutherland Institute on Friday, Romney was also critical of the Trump administration’s coronavirus response, calling it “very, very disappointing” and saying that the US did not “distinguish us in a positive way by how we react to the crisis. “
“From the beginning, there was a tendency on the part of the administration to dismiss Covid-19 as a threat, not to mention how serious it could become, and there was no immediate action to, if you will, to ring all the alarm bells, “said Romney.
CNN’s Ryan Struyk contributed to this report.
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