Ryan Presses Early Voting, Military Ballot Concerns in Wisconsin
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ABC News(WAUKESHA, Wis.) — Returning home to the same city he came back to after being selected as Mitt Romney’s running mate two months ago, Paul Ryan reminded his hometown crowd to vote early, comparing his party’s success in the state’s recall to victory for his ticket in November.
“Let’s not forget, early voting starts pretty soon, so you can vote early, you can vote early absentee so that you can make sure we work on making phone calls and getting people to the polls,” Ryan, wearing a Green Bay Packers tie, said. “Because you know what we learned here in Wisconsin?…we learned that if you’d say to people here’s who I am, this is what I believe in, and this is what I’m going to do, in Wisconsin we elect them and then they go do it and that’s exactly what we’re going to do for the United States of America, we’re going to take on these challenges in this country.”
The yearlong recall effort ended in Gov. Scott Walker, who attended Monday’s rally, keeping his job as well as the state legislature remaining Republican. Both the Romney and Obama campaigns are aggressively fighting for Ryan’s home state with ads from both sides flooding the state as well as the candidates stumping here.
“We here in Wisconsin we have an obligation,” Ryan said to a crowd of several hundred at Carroll University. “We are what we call a targeted state. That means we have an obligation we have a responsibility and we have a great opportunity. We have shown and we have seen what courage looks like. Look at that man right there, Scott Walker. Look at these state legislators. That’s what courage looks like. And in Wisconsin we have shown that if leaders step up and lead we as voters have their backs… Let’s make sure that we win Wisconsin. Let’s get out to the polls. Let’s get people there.”
Ryan’s event was a town hall, he’s done over 500 in his district mostly on his health care and his budget plan, but Monday he got asked about ballots being distributed to servicemen and women currently overseas.
On Friday, the Romney campaign filed a federal lawsuit seeking more time for military voters in Wisconsin to return ballots that were sent past their deadline and Ryan mentioned the suit while answering the question, blaming the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board.
“You can’t selectively enforce our election laws,” Ryan said. “You can’t selectively enforce voting rights. And of all the people who have a right to vote, it’s our men and women in uniform, especially those that are overseas serving us right now — of all the people who deserve this right –we’ve had to go to the length, our campaign, of having to bring a lawsuit to make sure that these men and women who are getting their absentee ballots, who are serving in military, who are overseas have enough time to return their ballots so that their votes are counted.”
Ryan said “if a single soldier is denied his or her right to vote, that’s a shame. That’s not what we can stand for in this country.
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