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US President Donald Trump’s attacks on voting by mail during the coronavirus crisis and his suggestion to delay the November presidential election are part of an effort to sow confusion and suppress voter turnout, according to Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
“The reason he does it is because the more people hear something like that, the more they’re discouraged to vote,” Pelosi said during an interview with CNN on Friday. “It’s a way to suppress the vote.”
Pelosi’s remarks came a day after Trump suggested that the country’s November presidential election should be delayed, repeating his claim that mail-in voting would enable large-scale voter fraud.
Trump said on Thursday the election should be postponed until people could “properly, securely and safely” vote.
In a series of tweets, Trump said that “universal mail-in voting” would make November’s election the “most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history” and a “great embarrassment to the USA”.
Pelosi noted that Trump’s tweets on Thursday on delaying the election came on the same day as the funeral for the civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, who died of cancer earlier this month aged 80.
“At the same time as we are burying a hero of voting rights, our democracy, he goes out and says something beneath the dignity of the White House. But he does that almost every day, beneath the dignity of the presidency,” Pelosi added.
Former President Barack Obama delivered a eulogy at Lewis’s funeral in which he said that “there are those in power who are doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting.”
Obama said people in power were “attacking our voting rights with surgical precision” and called for a wide voting rights reform.
Former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush also spoke at Lewis’s funeral on Thursday.
