Galvin On Trump Voter Fraud Allegations: 'I'm Tired Of Foolish Nonsense'
BOSTON (CBS) -- Massachusetts Secretary of State Bill Galvin is angry about President Donald Trump's stated belief--despite no credible evidence--that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election, and says it's time for the president to "separate fact from fiction."
"I think it's completely bogus," Galvin told WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Carl Stevens. "Once again, he's operating without any facts. I take personal offense, and I think the people of Massachusetts should take personal offense."
When Galvin heard the news Wednesday morning that Trump was calling for a "major investigation" into the alleged fraud, he called such an investigation "ridiculous."
"I am angry. I'm tired of foolish nonsense, and this is nonsense. It's absolutely untrue," he said. "You have to call out lies when they're lies, and this is a lie."
Despite winning the electoral college, Trump lost the popular vote by nearly three million votes.
"Make no mistake, she lost," Galvin said of Hillary Clinton. "She lost the electoral college, that's our system--but she did win the popular vote, and she won it in places like Massachusetts where he got one out of three votes and she got almost two out of three."
He said factors like record turnout in the 2016 presidential election in the Commonwealth--including for early voting--are why he finds the president's statements particularly insulting.
"To say that that's bogus, and that we didn't actually have people voting--I saw those people standing in line," Galvin said. "We had over a million people vote early, which meant that they had to go out of their way to vote. I was with those citizens, they were legitimate voters."
As for Trump's claim that dead people voted in the election, Galvin says they couldn't have in Massachusetts. He said he purges each death certificate from the state voter registry, and then sends the registry off to cities and towns.
Galvin has questions about Trump's call for further investigation.
"Who's going to investigate it? And why wasn't he investigating it before this?" he asked. "He didn't complain when he won the primary here. He didn't have any problem with that."
He says that, if the president has the facts, he should come forward with them--and suggested that, if there really was voter fraud, maybe they should do the presidential election all over.
"If he can't separate fact from fiction, he shouldn't be president," Galvin said. "If he really thinks there's that much illegal activity, why don't we have a re-vote and see if he likes that? He won't, because he'll lose."
WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Carl Stevens reports