While President Donald Trump has refused to promise a peaceful transfer of power should he lose, saying he wasn’t sure the election could be honest with the proliferation of mail ballots, Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt says the U.S. election system is “secure as it’s ever been.”
Blunt, chairman of the Senate Rules Committee and member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, took to the Senate floor earlier this week to talk about the $1.2 billion made available to help states update systems, increase cybersecurity and address COVID-19 issues.
“I want to talk about the election system itself,” Blunt said, “because, in my view, the Election Day system is as secure as it’s ever been, the registration system as secure as it’s ever been.”
Blunt said Wednesday that the U.S. was “in a much different place than we were four years ago” in terms of safeguarding the election process, which has included an effort to limit foreign meddling.
Though Blunt offered his opinion that “the best place to vote is at a polling place on Election Day,” he encouraged those using other means — like mail-in ballots — to still vote. He later said public confidence that the system will tabulate each vote should be “a pretty safe bet.”
“Politics can become heated and noisy during an election,” Blunt said. “But at the end of the day, the American people need to understand that we’re doing all we can to give them the ability to cast their ballots with minimal obstacles and maximum confidence that what happens on Election Day is what the voters voted to do on Election Day.”
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