Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) thinks Republicans may have “over-emphasized” the issue of voter fraud, according to The Washington Post.
Paul made the comments on Tuesday during a sit-down interview with former senior Obama adviser David Axelrod at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. Here’s the portion from the transcript highlighted by the Post:
Paul: Dead people do still vote in some elections. There still is some fraud. And so we should stop that, and one way of doing it is (driver’s licenses).
Axelrod: Although the incidence of fraud is relatively small.
Paul: It probably is, and I think Republicans may have over-emphasized this. I don’t know.
The Post noted that Paul said he supports voter ID efforts as a way of providing a minimal standard at the polls. But he said efforts to curtail early voting is a “mistake.”
“I don’t think early voting is biased one way or the other,” Paul said. “So I think eliminating it is a mistake for the — Republicans who want to make their whole thing eliminating early voting, I think that’s a mistake.”