Romney to NAACP: More States Should Implement ‘Safer’ Mail-In Voting

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) on Wednesday evening insisted that voting by mail is secure and said he hopes that more states would implement more reliable vote-by-mail procedures.

In a conversation with NAACP President Derrick Johnson and journalist April Ryan, Romney emphasized that voting by mail is secure.

“I, for one, believe that vote by mail is a more secure system because if we think there’s been voter fraud or machines have been tampered with, we can always go back to the paper copy, we can compare signatures, we can talk to the person to see if they actually voted, we can find out if they are dead or alive,” Romney said. “All these things are available if we have a ballot with a name on it.”

He said the majority of voters in Utah vote by mail and his state has not had issues with voter fraud.

“I now live in Utah and have for a decade. In Utah, we have vote by mail. And the great majority of our people—I’ll bet it’s close to 90 percent—vote by mail. And let me tell you, it’s very convenient,” Romney said. “We haven’t had problems with voter fraud. And I think states would be wise to put in a program like that.”

Romney added that in Utah, “ballots are mailed out to homes based upon registered voters and, of course, registered addresses,” noting that voters “sign a document” and “that signature will be compared with the signature on file.”

Though he insisted that he does not want to see a federal takeover of the voting system, Romney also said he was bothered that some voters have to stand in mile-long lines just... (Read more)

Latest News