From MSNBC’s “Hardball,” March 11, 2008”
MATTHEWS: “Very last question. There's word from Florida that they intend to put out a mailing sort of a campaign -- I mean, an election process, whereby they make up for the primary they had before, which was ruled out of order by the Democratic National Committee and you did not campaign in. They're talking about mailing it -- people mailing in their ballots. Do you trust the security, the honesty of such an election process?”
OBAMA: “Well, I think we would have to figure out whether this was fraud- proof. I mean, Oregon, for example, has a terrific mail-in system, but they've already scanned everybody's signatures who's registered to vote so that they can check to make sure that in fact the right people are voting.” And that's something that I think you'd have to figure out. But our general view has been that we've just played by the rules throughout. We were told that Michigan and Florida wouldn't count, and so we said we wouldn't campaign there. Senator Clinton said the same thing, that they wouldn't count. Now, her campaign is suggesting that they should. What we want to do is to make sure that the Florida and the Michigan folks are seated, but to do so in an equitable way. And whatever system the Democratic National Committee comes up with that is fair and equitable but also makes sure that the votes of people in Michigan and Florida are dealt with, we're going to be open to that. We want to make sure that they're seated as well.”