EUGENE, Ore. - Sen. Ron Wyden took to the Senate floor Wednesday and called on his Republican colleagues "to start taking on Donald Trump's lies" about vote-by-mail, which the senior senator from Oregon called the "gold standard for casting an informed vote."
"I am the first United States senator to be elected completely by mail," Wyden told the Senate during debate over a voting rights bill. "The second United States senator elected completely by mail was my friend, Republican Gordon Smith."
Wyden continued:
The country looked up and its first experience, colleagues, with vote-by-mail was thoroughly bipartisan.
As the country began to get its arms around vote-by-mail, it was bipartisan and the bipartisan efforts to build on it really took off all across the country until President Donald Trump got elected and began to spew all these lies about vote-by-mail.
So then something that was completely bipartisan suddenly became very partisan.
"What I want to do is rebuild that bipartisanship," Wyden said. "The fact is vote-by-mail is the gold standard for casting an informed vote, particulary for working people, seniors and others who would like the time, the opportunity - in their living rooms, in their kitchens - to look at the ballot, consider the various alternatives."
Wyden invoked the late Dennis Richardson, a Republican from southern Oregon elected secretary of state by voters statewide - and by mail. The secretary of state oversees the Elections Division and Oregon's vote-by-mail system.
"He basically told Donald Trump to go fly a kite when it came to vote-by-mail," Wyden said. "Dennis Richardson, our late secretary of state, an arch conservative, said the reality is there'd hadn't been the fraud, it's worked very effectively, you're off base."
Wyden said Republicans need to break with Trump on the position that vote-by-mail results in fraud.
"The last analysis of fraud in Oregon is 0.00001% of all votes cast," Wyden said.
RELATED | Oregon governor: No widespread voter intimidation 'other than comments from the president'
In November 2020, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown was asked about voter intimidation in the lead up to the general election.
"Other than comments from the president of the United States discouraging Americans from voting by mail, I am not aware of threats and suppression happening throughout Oregon," she said.
Wyden issued a challenge Wednesday to the GOP:
They are going to have to go to Donald Trump and tell him: Look, we just don't agree with you on this. And that's the kind of leadership we need. We saw it Oregon, we saw it Utah, we've seen it now from sea to shining sea.
I want my Republican colleagues to know we're going to meet them more than half way but they are going to have to start taking on Donald Trump's lies on these issues if we're going to have that bipartisanship that my colleagues have been talking about this morning.