Cutting past the confusion and misinformation in the battle over balloting.
The battle over voting by mail flared up over the last week, thanks in part to some presidential tweets that, as they often do, have generated more heat than light.
On May 20, President Trump tweeted: “Breaking: Michigan sends absentee ballots to 7.7 million people ahead of Primaries and the General Election. This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this Voter Fraud path.”
On March 26, he tweeted: “There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed.”
There’s a lot to unpack here. First of all, Michigan hadn’t sent out 7.7 million ballots — it announced plans to send out 7.7 million absentee-ballot applications. Trump replaced the original tweet with one correcting the error, but it still included the claim that he would “ask to hold up funding” to Michigan for sending out absentee-ballot applications. Ask whom? It wasn’t clear, and he dropped the idea shortly thereafter.
As for the tweet that mail-in ballots would be “substantially fraudulent”? That’s the claim that prompted Twitter to issue its first ever presidential fact-check. It may be unwise for any social-media platform to get into the business of fact-checking politicians, and it was especially odd to single out this tweet, rather than the deranged tweets suggesting MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is a murderer.
If you strained hard enough, you could come up with a somewhat plausible defense: The word “substantially” may mean largely or significantly. Maybe he meant the latter? And since elections are sometimes decided by a very small number of votes, any amount of voter fraud is significant. That reasonable defense was dashed Thursday night when the president tweeted Thursday evening that “MAIL-IN VOTING WILL LEAD TO MASSIVE FRAUD AND ABUSE. IT WILL ALSO LEAD TO THE END OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY.”
To cut past the confusion and misinformation, it’s important to keep in mind three things in the debate over mail-in voting.
The first is that the November elections will very likely be a “mostly mail” election whether anyone likes it or not — even if no laws are changed. Twenty-nine states already have no-excuse absentee voting, including the states where control of the White House and the Senate will be decided: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, Iowa, Montana, and Maine. In April, when Wisconsin held its Democratic primary, only one-quarter of voters cast ballots in person on Election Day. If voters are concerned about the coronavirus, and there’s every reason to believe it will still be a threat in November, the overwhelming majority will choose early mail-in or curbside voting.
The second thing to keep in mind is that expanded mail-in and early-voting will not necessarily hurt Republicans in November. The GOP just won an all-mail special election in California. Colorado Republican Cory Gardner won his first term in the Senate in 2014 in an all-mail election. In 2018, 79 percent of ballots were cast in Arizona by mail. Republican governor Doug Ducey won re-election by 14.2 points even as Republican senator Martha McSally lost by 2.4 points.
So Republicans can win in mail or mostly-mail elections, and at any rate it’s unlikely that many states will transition to California-style all-mail states before November. The logistical hurdles are too high, but there will be an increase in absentee- and early-voting nationwide. If Republicans were solely interested in winning, they would be more concerned about a significant sliver of elderly voters — a Republican-leaning demographic — not voting because of concerns about catching the virus than about the possibility of a slight increase in the small number of illegitimate votes.
And that brings us to the third point, which is that there are real and legitimate concerns about voter fraud and the best way to safely and securely expand voting options in the fall. This year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Arizona’s ban on “ballot harvesting” — the practice of third-party collection of mail-in ballots. Critics of ballot harvesting are concerned that the practice opens the door to voter fraud and intimidation, not to mention the spread of the virus if ballot collectors are going door to door. Arizona’s attorney general is trying to get the Supreme Court to review the Ninth Circuit’s decision, which could affect more than 20 other states that have similar laws.
In Congress, meanwhile, the fight is between Democrats who want to force states to adopt a uniform policy on how to conduct elections and Republicans who are adamantly opposed to a federal takeover over the elections process but are not opposed to providing more money for election assistance.
As much as the president’s Twitter feed and media coverage may make it difficult to see, that’s where the real debate over balloting stands.
As an “elderly” Republican voter, I am far less concerned about the virus than I am about the staggering number of fraudulent votes cast by illegals and the dearly departed. Every voter should have ID.
Your reasoning has been debunked. Sorry if you still believe what your president has said.
how is that debunked please? you cannot prove mail fraud. For example, when my 96-year grandmother’s ballot arrives she is voted for President Trump and she will not even know it. She does not even know what day of the week it is, or there is an election. How about at the crack heads, drunks, and other people who don’t even bother to vote to sell or trading their ballots for cash or goodies and then filled in by those people who acquired them? We can only hope those lost, stolen, paid for votes are all for President Trump.
more of your liberal LIES
it is proven every year that the dead vote many mail-in votes for republicans disappear and “found” well past election day and people voting over and over posing as voting helpers and democrats are whats voted for and what about all the voter forms being left on top of the mailboxes in apartments with the same address and different names?
Just here in Pa., Philadelphia has 115 % voter turnout, Pittsburgh has 110% turnout !! I was a poll watcher
during the 2016 election. We had 6 touch screen voting machines at our polling place, 3 of the machines
when straight Republican ticket was selected Clinton was selected but the down ticket stayed Republican.
Half of our machines did this in a conservative area. We warned people to re check their selections before
submitting, as you should anyway. This election we will have new machines, without paper tallies, though.
We will see how this turns out, as our primary is Tuesday.
Voting by mail can be done w/o fraud! The trouble is, lieberals are stripping away any protections like signature verification that would protect mail-in voting. States that issue drivers licenses to illegal aliens are rife for voting fraud!!! Politicians that are opposed to National Voter ID are encouraging voter fraud not stopping it!!!
This is how the Democrats are trying to high jack the election. These mail in ballots are not a secret ballot as we are guaranteed by law. All of your information is on the outside of the envelope that contains the ballot. Many voters do not trust the mail in ballots because they can easily be called invalid for so many reasons. A replay of the hanging chad. The ballots can also be thrown away is you belong to the wrong party which is on the envelope. To try to push more voters to use the mail in ballots states like Pennsylvania have eliminated all but one of the polling places in communities across the state forcing many voters to travel farther to an unfamiliar voting place to vote. They have also eliminated most of the elected members of the local election boards. This is overturning our local elections and have appointed board members that they have put on these boards to replace those who were elected. This can’t be allowed to happen. This is a dry run for fixing the election in November.
I thought was a Patriot site? This article has Democrat and liberal bill all over it! Any more article bullchit like this and I was unsubscribe in heartbeat!
Oregon has ballot mail for 22 years: My deceased neighbor received a ballot for May primary. Four months after a certified death certificate was delivered in person by surviving spouse to the county clerk. How many other deceased names were mailed ballots? Judicial Watch has another state on its clean up list.
Yup FUCK mail in ballots. Whats the matter with you people. Liberal crock of shit, like everything else the Democrats try and shove down your pie hole. VERY BAD IDEA!!!
Exactly right Ron!
I agree with Ron
Think the liberal democrap bastards cheated before just wait that was nothing too what they’ll do now
I Am Out of here.
Take your liberal lies and SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS
mail in ballets just another scam, just this week S.C. ballots in Baltimore, postman defacing ballots , dead people voting, and what state had 113% of population registered to vote. if you have a legitimate reason , out of state , disability etc thats fine . you need ID to buy medicine , get on a plane ,renew your lic. etc you should have it to vote
Just what do you think that the reason for mail in voting is wanted by the left and the Democrats. It’s simple, voter fraud. These people know that Trump will win and still will win even if there was lot’s of voter fraud. These Democrats just don’t get it, the American people just don’t want their kind of Government. The higher ups in the Democrat party have been lining their pockets for years and Trump and the good Americans know this. The only way to stop this is electing Trump for another 4 years so he can get the swamp completely drained.