An election official sorts out unopened ballots at the King County Elections headquarters on August 4, 2020 in Renton, Washington.
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New Jersey will send e-mail ballots to all registered voters for the 2020 presidential election, while still offering the option for voters to cast their personal votes in person, Goochef Phil Murphy said Friday.
“When it comes to post-in-the-vote, the good news is in a general election. It doesn’t matter what party you belong to, everyone gets a vote,” Murphy announced in a CNN interview. “That we will have a hybrid model in November.”
The Democratic governor’s embrace of a widespread mail-in vote plan comes as President Donald Trump has aggressively sought to undermine that voting model, claiming it will lead to massive fraud despite assurances from election experts.
While experts say voter fraud is generally rare, Murphy acknowledged that some “specific” instances of alleged fraud have been seen in his state – particularly in an election in Paterson, which Trump has repeatedly claimed is a reminder of something there comes as universal post- when voting is allowed in the November general.
But the governor told CNN that “I’m pretty sure we’re more likely to be struck by lightning than we are to detect voter fraud.”
New Jersey implemented the “hybrid” model for its primary election in the morning of the coronavirus pandemic in July, because many voters who would otherwise personally vote expect polling stations to escape fear of contract or proliferation. the disease. More than 5.2 million Covid-19 cases and at least 167,200 deaths have been reported in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University.
“We sent votes to people who were registered in one of the parties. We sent applications by email to those who were not and we also provided personal voting capacity,” Murphy said.
“It was a success. Not perfect, but an overwhelming success. And so we will announce, not breaking too much news here today, that we will be expanding that model in the general election in November.”
Murphy said that “if you are personally voting, you should do what we call preliminary voting, because people do not necessarily know at the polling station whether you actually already have a vote by email or not. We have done that in ‘ First of all, a little more wrapping, but it works. “
An official report from the Republican National Committee appeared to criticize Murphy’s remarks by marking his admission that New Jersey saw some evidence of alleged fraud in the recent election.
The Garden State will participate in a handful of others who are already planning to send votes to the voters. The Trump campaign has submitted at least one state, Nevada, after its governor signed into law a plan for state-wide post-voting.
The White House declined to comment. Representatives for the governor’s office and the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment on Murphy’s remarks.
Democrats say they are much more likely than Republicans to vote for president by post, according to a new poll / CNBC poll of likely voters in the battlefield states.
The poll, which was conducted between Friday and Sunday and surveyed 2,701 likely battlefield voters, found 64% of Democrats said they expected to vote by mail, compared to just 14% of Republican respondents and 36 % of the Independents. The question has an error margin of plus or minus 1.9 percentage points.
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