Senate Democrat: Mail-in ballots needed because GOP trying to stop 'people of color from voting'

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Rep. Greg Walden: Why we shouldn’t vote by mail in 2020

Oregon Rep. Greg Walden has one stern message for Democrats that are calling for mail-in voting in 2020: ‘it is really dangerous for the electoral integrity and the outcome of the election.’

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., pushed mail-in voting as a way to counter alleged Republican attempts to suppress minority votes.

“It's really a great system," Merkley said, referring to mail-in voting. "One of those valuable things, which will become more and more important is it stops so many forms of voter suppression and voter intimidation. The Republicans are trying to stop poor people from voting, they’re trying to stop college students from voting, people of color from voting, Indian tribes from voting."

He made those comments during a Tuesday interview with Sirius XM host Dean Obeidallah. Merkley added that mail-in balloting prevents Republicans from engaging in "tricks," like long wait times, that would suppress the vote.

Democrats have floated mail-in voting as concerns grew about spreading the coronavirus on Election Day in November. President Trump has panned the idea, arguing that it would encourage voter fraud -- a point Republicans often make when discussing things like voter ID laws.

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Merkley pushed back on that argument, arguing that the system has been "incredible" in his own state. "We've had essentially no scandals," he told Obeidallah.

He added that mail-in voting was a "very, very reliable, good system and it makes sure that people don't get disenfranchised because of traffic, because of snow, because someone rigged the precinct to have too few poll workers or because the computers went down there that night."

"It's all paper so it can be recounted which is a huge factor in legitimacy," he added.

President Trump is threatening to withhold federal funding from Michigan and Nevada over their decisions to enact widespread mail-in voting in the upcoming election, claiming the moves were "done illegally" and will lead to voter fraud.

Merkley's comments touched on a long-running debate in which Democrats brand voting reforms as Republican attempts to suppress the vote.

Republican National Committee (RNC) National Press Secretary Mandi Merritt responded in a statement provided to Fox News on Wednesday.

"None of the five states that conduct all-mail elections send ballots to inactive voters. Washington, for example, requires voters to provide some identifying information in the return envelope. Democrats are arguing against these commonsense measures," Merritt said.

"States with widespread mail-in voting took years to roll out the process, not mere months. 'You can’t just flip a switch and go from real low absentee ballots to 100 percent vote-by-mail,' according to Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman. It took Washington 5 [sic] years to switch to all mail-in ballots."

Last year, former Georgia state Rep. Stacey Abrams predicted that Republicans would "intimidate" minority voters without certain protections in place.

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"They just lifted a consent decree that's kept Republicans and the RNC from going into local communities and intimidating voters by having off-duty officers tell people that they are monitoring their votes," Abrams told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow in August. "For the first time since 1981, the RNC will be allowed to cheat and lie and go into polling places and scare voters, particularly voters of color."

Abrams' comments referred to a decree that originated in 1982 with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) suing the GOP for allegedly trying to discourage African-American voters. At the beginning of 2018, one of former President Obama's judicial appointees struck down an effort to extend that decree, saying the party did not show -- "by a preponderance of the evidence" -- that the GOP violated it.

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RNC communications director Michael Ahrens responded at the time by calling Abrams' statements "totally baseless," and claiming that the RNC tried to increase voter turnout.

“What she’s saying is totally baseless and irresponsible," he said in a statement to Fox News. "The RNC’s job is getting more people to vote, not less. If Abrams actually cared about the integrity of elections, she’d finally concede the governor’s race she lost by 55,000 votes."

Fox News' Ronn Blitzer contributed to this report.