DNC Chairman Tom Perez said the Democratic primaries should remain as scheduled, advocating that people “vote by mail” rather than casting their ballots in-person.
While appearing on MSNBC on Monday night, host Chris Hayes asked Perez about his opinion on an Ohio court rejecting Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s request to postpone the state’s Tuesday primary until June.
“Does the DNC have a position on the Ohio lawsuit?” Hayes asked.
In response, Perez said the DNC did not “intervene in the Ohio lawsuit” but added that all states should adopt “vote by mail provisions” in the future.
“I was in contact today with people in a number of these states, including but not limited to Arizona, and, again, asking them if — do they believe they have the systems in place that enable them to put the elections on tomorrow? And they do,” he said. “The point I’m making is there’s a broader issue here, and that broader issue is, we ought to make it easier for people to vote, and one way to do it is to have vote by mail.”
Hayes later pressed Perez on his position, asking, “So, you are calling for universal vote-by-mail adoption in the remaining primary states?”
“Wherever practicable, and I think you can make this happen,” Perez said.
Earlier in the day, DeWine petitioned a court to postpone the state’s primary elections several months out of concerns that it would expose many residents to the growing coronavirus pandemic. Judge Richard Frye denied DeWine’s petition hours later, arguing the state of the nation will likely not improve by the requested time.
“To the contrary, it’s my understanding, from the briefings we’ve seen in the national media, that it may be months before we get to a point of stability or a peak of the virus and its transmission rates,” the judge said. “We’re here at 7 o’clock, 12 hours before the election. I don’t believe the plaintiffs have proceeded in a timely manner,” he said.
COVID-19 cases have appeared in every continent except Antarctica. Nearly 181,000 people have tested positive for the virus around the world, killing over 7,000 people. In the United States, there are over 4,400 confirmed cases of the virus, which has killed approximately 78 people.
