Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes:

Well, I honestly feel that I was sharing the frustration of so many people across our state, people who wanted to exercise their right to vote, the people who requested an absentee ballot and have not gotten one yet, the people who have been standing in line for two hours to vote.

I believe that I shared their frustration. This is a day that didn't have to happen. And it definitely didn't have to happen in this fashion.

Governor Evers issued an order to try to delay this election, to move it until June. And Republicans in the legislature, they decided to put people's health and safety at risk and in jeopardy.

And in doing that, they have caused mass hysteria. They have caused chaos. And we see it at the polling locations. You see where people unaware of what to do, because they have an absentee ballot that they may not have been able to return yet.

They have been told that if you didn't return the absentee ballot in or and if you haven't received one already, even though you have requested one, that you were expected to show up and vote in person.

Now, that compromises a person's health, because we know that coronavirus has run rampant. Here in this state, we have over 2,500 positive test results. We're now up to 92 deaths in our state. People don't want to take that risk.

And what it does is, it disenfranchises voters. It makes people not want to get up, get out of the house and go risk it.