2:28:59 With just six months until November's presidential election, states across the country are trying to determine how they will safely collect and count ballots during a national health emergency. For many states, that means reevaluating in-person versus absentee voting. Just yesterday, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that the entire state would be asked to vote by mail in the November election. But for states like Connecticut, with a long history of in-person voting, the push to vote by mail remains a complicated task. NewsHour Weekend's Christopher Booker has more. The scenes from Wisconsin's recent election did not sit well with Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill. That was a turning point in my discussions with both the legislative leadership and the governor. Nobody wants to look like Milwaukee, frankly, and that can happen pretty easily. After Democratic Governor Tony Evers' executive order that delayed the state's election by two months was overturned by the Supreme Court,
2:29:56 Wisconsin voters had to go to polling places if they wanted to cast a ballot. 52 people who worked the polls or voted on April 7th have tested positive for COVID-19. A situation Merrill does not want to duplicate in her state. You know, people are just waking up to the fact that they may be asked to vote either in a primary or particularly in the general election is their concern and jeopardize their health. And I think the Milwaukee situation really galvanized people because it was all over television and people were home watching it. But hoping to minimize in-person voting in Connecticut will not be an easy task. With voting laws dating back to the state's 1818 Constitution, the rules to vote absentee or by mail in the state nicknamed the Constitution State are restrictive. Yeah, that's a decent overview. Well, that's a decent overview. It was the wrong clip. It's the one you told me to play. Vote by mail fraud question. Oh, it was the wrong clip.
2:30:57 But that's a better clip for the intro. To this clip, I should have actually played that clip first so you accidentally did the right thing. Voter fraud is a major talking point for those against expanding vote by mail. On April 8th, President Trump tweeted that Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to statewide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it. Tremendous potential for voter fraud. And for whatever reason, doesn't work out well for Republicans. Voter fraud comes up quite often. Have you seen rampant voter fraud in Connecticut? Oh, absolutely not. I mean, for people to complain about absentee ballot fraud in Connecticut is really kind of ridiculous because we have so many processes in place. First, you have to mail the application to people. They have to fill it out, mail it back to the clerk. The clerk then mails the ballot to the person, which is in a double envelope. You have to put it in an inside envelope and then in an outside envelope to protect their anonymity.
2:31:53 and then you mail it back to the clerk. And during all this process, the clerk has to note every step of the way in our electronic voter registry. Secretary Merrill says there's little evidence that there is widespread voter fraud in Connecticut. Can you point to specific instances of voter fraud in Connecticut? I don't have them on me, but we deal with these every year. We end up having a lot of kind of quirky election issues that I don't particularly find coincidental, but it's something we need to address. The critics of expanded vote by mail often cite voter fraud. Is there evidence that when you increase the access to vote by mail, fraud increases? None. None? There's no evidence? None. Whatsoever. Nowhere. It does not exist.
2:32:41 I'm poorly informed then. Yeah, you don't know what you're talking about. I need to shut up. Because she said right there, that Democrat woman, she said no, it doesn't exist. No, never happened. It never happens, it never happens. I don't know what you're talking about. There's no way. Just because you go, you walk into the, like for example here at the house, I walk in, the mail's been in, there's two or three ballots sitting there. I could pick any one of them up, type a bunch of stuff on it, put stuff on it, sign somebody's phony name, send it in. I could do that, anyone could do it. Somebody, they lose some mail, somebody steals it from a post office box. I mean, that's just minor, but the harvesting, which you pointed out, which has always been the big threat, and the joke of it is the Democrats always hated much of this because it would be, well, I mean, the Republicans used to hate this for the reasons that the Democrats used to like it, which is in the deep south back in the 50s and 60s, they would just,
2:33:37 The Democrats would steal all the black votes. Just rouse the black vote. They just steal them. They steal the black vote. Or they buy a vote. There's another way of doing it for harvesting. You go door to door and say I'll give you five bucks for your ballot. Is that illegal? Of course it's illegal. Is it? Yeah, it's illegal. Is it illegal to say to someone here's five bucks, write down your vote right now? That's not illegal. Well, probably not. Isn't that exactly what politics is? I'm going to give you this for your vote? Isn't that politics? Well, there's that element. But anyway, so it's asking for trouble. Oh well, there's that. Yeah, but this woman, when I heard that clip, where at the very end of that clip she goes, oh no!
2:34:27 Then I know something's up. How do we usually put that? Somewhere we had a thing about that that we could see. Oh yeah, if you see that's not it. Where is it? We had nothing to see here. I've lost so many. I'm losing my touch. You are. It's the eyeball. Nothing. It's not completely healed, I'll give you that, but it's not that bad. Don't look over here! Nothing to see here! Ooh, look at that! There we go. Buttons, buttons, buttons. Yeah, we haven't played that for a long time. I know, that's why I couldn't find it. You know, it's been replaced by... Alright!
2:35:04 That's what happens. Orange. So what is taking place now is we have this political fight which Trump is tweeting about a lot so I guess he's worried is this You know the the house is looking to make legislation is and I guess you can do it by state even To vote by mail because all coronavirus be too dangerous for people to show up and vote And it's a way is it too dangerous for them to show up at the grocery store and stand in line Is it too dangerous to go to the hair cutter? I mean, why is this more dangerous than these other things that people do constantly if there's a shop that says hair cutter I'm not going that's a dangerous shop