Governor Holcomb still isn’t recommending a switch to no-excuse mail-in voting for the General Election. But he says fears about voter fraud are not part of his thought process, and neither is President Trump.
“What I want to make sure is that our system can handle the volume along the way, and we are not in a stay-at-home posture,” Holcomb explained during Wednesday’s COVID-19 press conference. “If you look at the mobility and the folks that are traveling out and about every day, whether they’re working from home or not, we know that we don’t want to go back to a stay-at-home if we don’t need to, and we don’t need to. So voting, in my mind, fits in that scenario.”
Holcomb added that Hoosiers deserve timely election results. “We call it ‘Election Day’ not ‘Election Month’” he said. “And I hope, as we work on this front, that we’ll get that right going into November 3, and we will.”
Holcomb noted that voters already have the option to vote early, and the state offers a number of reasons why voters may cast a mail-in ballot. He said he may issue some clarification on those, but he’s waiting for a federal court case to be resolved first.
Holcomb’s opponent in the governor’s race, Dr. Woody Myers, has called for no-excuse absentee voting. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Jennifer McCormick also voiced support for mail-in voting during her press conference Thursday, noting that 374 schools in the state are used as polling sites. “If you have people using your building for sometimes one or more polling sites, that is not inexpensive during COVID,” McCormick said. “You’ve got people coming in. You’ve got deep cleaning that needs to happen. It layers on a whole other concern. It’s unnecessary.”
Governor Holcomb noted Wednesday that there were no recorded instances of anyone getting COVID-19 from voting in-person in the primary. But he also wasn’t aware of any instances of fraud stemming from the expansion of mail-in voting, either. He also noted that voters and poll workers will be required to wear masks at polling places.
