Election Day will remain on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2020, according to Senate Rules Committee Chairman Roy Blunt.
The coronavirus pandemic has already postponed primaries in several states, leaving some prominent figures, including Joe Biden, to suggest that President Trump may try to delay the general election. Blunt, a Missouri Republican, told CNN there is no reason Election Day would change.
“We’ve had elections in the middle of the Civil War and in the middle of World War II,” he said Wednesday. “I can think of no justification for changing the elections.”
In late April, Biden said he believed Trump would try to delay the 2020 election to his own benefit because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Mark my words: I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow; come up with some rationale why it can’t be held,” Biden said. “Imagine threatening not to fund the post office. Now, what in God’s name is that about? Other than trying to let the word out that he’s going to do all he can to make it very hard for people to vote. That’s the only way he thinks he can possibly win.”
Trump, however, called the notion “made-up propaganda” and said he is not thinking about postponing the election “at all.”
Unlike primary elections in which each state can decide to hold the vote when they see fit, the general election must take place on the date chosen by Congress in 1875. Elections Day is held, by law, on the Tuesday that follows the first Monday in November on even-numbered years.
Congress could agree to change that legislation in 2020 because of the pandemic, but Blunt’s response highlights that some Senate Republicans would be opposed. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already included provisions in her latest $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill for mail-in voting and voter registration requirements, signaling that she wants the election to take place as scheduled through modified methods because of the virus.
