Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and one of President Donald Trump’s top coronavirus advisers, said there is “no reason” Americans shouldn’t be able to go to the polls and vote in-person this November as long as they follow social-distancing guidelines.
“I think if carefully done, according to the guidelines, there’s no reason that I can see why that not be the case,” Fauci told ABC News this week.
“If you go and wear a mask, if you observe the physical distancing, and don’t have a crowded situation, there’s no reason why shouldn’t be able to do that,” he said.
Individuals who are “compromised physically or otherwise” should forgo voting in person if need be, Fauci added, but otherwise “there’s no reason why we should be able to vote in person,” he reiterated.
Democrats, however, have been using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to push mail-in voting.
Several Democratic-controlled states have expanded the vote-by-mail system over the past few months, arguing that forcing Americans to head to the polls would endanger their health.
But a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention proves this fear is unfounded.
The CDC evaluated COVID-19 cases in Wisconsin’s urban areas for several weeks after the state held its primary election in April.
They discovered that only 14 people out of the nearly 19,000 who voted ended up testing positive for the virus between April 9 and April 21. That means there was no significant spread, even though residents voted in person.
Trump has accused Democrats of trying to stack the election against him through the mail-in system, which is ripe for voter fraud and abuse, according to multiple studies.
He even suggested this week that he would cut funding to the United States Postal Service if Democrats continue to push voting by mail.
“They want three and a half billion dollars for something that’ll turn out to be fraudulent, that’s election money basically,” Trump said, according to CNN.
He noted that congressional Democrats also had sought $25 billion to bolster the failing post office, which has been supplanted largely by private companies like Amazon that deliver their own packages with more efficiency.
Now they need that money in order to make the Post Office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump continued. “But if they don’t get those two items that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it.”
