Vermont’s GOP Gov. Phil Scott on Friday defended mail ballots and state-run elections, rejecting President Donald Trump’s calls for Republicans to “nationalize” elections and limit options for mail-in voting.
Asked how he responds to Trump’s call for voting to be nationalized, Scott said he goes back to the 10th Amendment, noting that it’s “clear on the role of the states in terms of elections. So I think that we should follow that and we’re closer to the people.”
“In Vermont, I would have to say, mail-in ballots are popular. Who are they popular with? Republicans,” Scott told “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker during a common ground conversation with North Carolina Democratic Gov. Josh Stein at the National Governors Association meeting in Oklahoma City.
The governor added that mail-in voting has increased voter participation among members of his party in his state, which in turn has boosted GOP representation in the state Legislature.
“We’re closer to our people and we know what’s right and what’s wrong, and we can control the elections,” Scott added, defending the role of states in administering elections.
“I would hope that all, if not the majority, of Democrats would agree that this is ours, not the federal government’s,” he said. “We were here before the federal government was, the states were, and so we formed the government. Now they’re getting bloated, and we need to protect our rights.”
A spokesperson for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Scott’s remarks come as Trump this year has continued his yearslong opposition to mail-in voting, falsely claiming that it is rife with fraud and abuse.
The claims have fueled the president’s desire to pass the SAVE America Act, a major piece of federal legislation to overhaul election administration, that has stalled in Congress.
Trump has repeatedly said that the bill would ban mail-in voting in most cases, which is not true, though the SAVE Act would impose additional requirements for citizens before registering to vote and casting a ballot.
The president himself, in a Florida special election earlier this year, voted by mail, saying it was alright for him to do so because “I’m president of the United States.”
Still, he continued to call mail-in voting “mail-in cheating” after using that method to vote.
Earlier this year, Trump also said in a podcast interview that Republicans should aim to “nationalize the voting,” comments that drew condemnation from both sides of the aisle.
In federal courts, the Trump administration has defended an executive order the president signed that aimed to create federal lists of voters and would have required mail-in ballots to be sent only to voters on those lists. A federal judge last month blocked that order, saying it’s unconstitutional for the federal government to intervene in the administration of state elections. Trump has appealed the case to the Supreme Court, asking for permission to impose the executive order as soon as August so that it can be in effect for the upcoming midterm elections.
Scott’s comments Thursday came during a moderated conversation with Stein, who said Trump’s repeated disparagement of mail-in voting and the current election system “is immensely damaging to the health of our democracy.”
The pair also spoke about a lawsuit that Vermont and North Carolina have signed onto opposing the Trump administration’s decision to condition the release of some state funds for emergency preparedness on compliance with the president’s demands for election administration reforms.
“When a disaster strikes, our objective, whether it’s local government, state government or federal government, must be to do everything in our power to save life and to help people get their lives back together,” Stein said. “So the notion that you would condition that on a state agreeing to something is offensive.”
Still, Stein said, some of the proposed reforms to the Federal Emergency Management Agency would be a “step in the right direction,” in making a process for disaster response that’s led by states and assisted by the federal government.
“When you think about something like a disaster, it should be locally driven, state managed and federally supported. And so, the resources are where it’s really critical that the federal government step up,” the North Carolina governor said.
He added later, “There’s the FEMA Review Council, and initially they were talking about eliminating FEMA altogether, and I was opposed to that. And now what they’re heading toward is much more flexibility and quicker money to states, so that we can then respond quickly, and that’s a step in the right direction.”
The two governors also spoke about the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda and called for lawmakers in Congress to pass lasting immigration reform, which Stein and Scott each said would take rising above the current political rhetoric.
“We need more immigration from my standpoint. Legal immigration. There’s got to be a pathway to do that,” Scott said, adding that it could happen if lawmakers forget about “partisanship, elections, thinking about who’s going to be in power, what can we do to leverage this to get in power.”
He added, “Forget about the next election. Just do the right thing, and nine times out of 10, that’s what works.”
Stein agreed, telling Welker, “Our immigration system does not work well. Congress refuses to act. They are too happy to score political points rather than to address a real problem.”
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