Haley says election results should be revealed on Election Night

ANKENY — Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley says the results of voting in all 50 states should be announced on Election Night. Haley spoke to a crowd in Ankeny last night and was asked if she feels elections are fair.

“I don’t mind absentee voting and I don’t mind early voting, but you have to prove you are who you say you are and when those ballots come in, they need to verify signatures and count them as they come in,” Haley said. “There’s no reason any state can’t produce the results on Election Night. There’s no reason whatsoever.”

Haley suggested “a lot of states” are doing things right and she urged the crowd to “keep the faith” about election integrity. “The good thing from COVID is we had a lot of election integrity laws that passed in multiple states,” Haley said. “There are a few states out there that we still have problems with and we’ve got to be careful and they bent the rules and they tried things and we’ve got to make sure that we continue to press those states to do it the right way because integrity in the election process matters.”

In May of 2011, when she was governor of South Carolina, Haley signed a law requiring voters show a drivers license, passport or military ID to prove they are eligible to vote in her state.

“I was vilified for it. The press said I was disenfranchising voters and I said: if you have to show a picture ID to buy Sudafed, if you’ve got to show a picture ID to get on a plane, you should have to show a picture ID to protect the integrity of the election process,” Haley said, to applause.

South Carolina was the 10th state to pass a voter ID requirement. Haley said her state offered South Carolina residents who didn’t have a photo I-D free transportation to get one. “Our of five million people in South Carolina, you know how many people asked for a ride? 25,” Haley said. “…Let me tell you this: it is absolutely racist when Democrats tell you that minorities are incapable of going to the DMV and getting an ID. We are perfectly capable of getting an ID from the DMV.”

Haley spoke for a little less than three minutes on the topic and was interrupted three times with applause, cheers and whistles for her answer. Haley called a voter ID requirement “the right way” to verify voters are who they say they are. Iowa’s voter ID law passed the legislature in 2017 and there are 35 states that require or request that voters provide some sort of identification to verify their identity.

Neither Haley nor the man who asked her the question mentioned former President Trump’s complaints about the 2020 election results, although Haley said “during COVID times” there was “mail (in) voting that shouldn’t have happened.”

Haley is scheduled to make campaign stops in Waterloo and Dubuque today and in Davenport on Friday.