President Trump and his reelection campaign have been getting increasingly vocal against mail-in voting, and many Republicans alike are vehemently opposed to it. In today’s post, let’s find out more about Donald Trump’s war against mail-in ballots and take a look at why he might be so against them.
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| Where each state stands on mail-in voting. |
As seen from the chart, all states do allow mail-in voting. In fact, five states (WA, OR, UT, CO, HI) even have all-mail voting—all voters are automatically sent a ballot in the mail, without needing to request one. Yet, 15 states (NH, CT, NY, DE, IN, WV, KY, TN, MO, AR, LA, SC, AL, MS, TX) still require voters to give a reason (such as illness, disabled, out of town, etc.) to be eligible to vote by mail. Although CT, DE, KY, MO, NH, NY, SC, TN, and WV are making some changes to allow some no-excuse mail-in voting for November’s general election, that still leaves some seven states without this service. Most of these are, unsurprisingly, Republican-leaning states.
It has been clear that Donald Trump (and other Republicans) are strongly against vote-by-mail. For example, Trump has made the following statement on vote-by-mail:
“There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mailboxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote. This will be a Rigged Election. No way!”
And just recently, on July 26, he made another tweet regarding mail-in voting:
“The 2020 Election will be totally rigged if Mail-In Voting is allowed to take place, & everyone knows it. So much time is taken talking about foreign influence, but the same people won’t even discuss Mail-In election corruption. Look at Patterson, N.J. 20% of vote was corrupted!”
The question, though, is why. Why is Donald Trump so against vote-by-mail? We need to dig deeper to find out the answer.
In normal circumstances, mail-in voting favors those who cannot get to a polling station easily. This means that underprivileged individuals (who generally vote Democrat) and elderly voters (who generally vote Republican) can have easier vote access. Because of this general divide (among other factors), many studies, like
this one, have found that a universal vote-by-mail system favors no specific party, meaning that estimated turnout (and vote share) is expected to be the same.
In addition, despite Donald Trump’s claims, voter fraud is exceedingly rare—only 4, out of 135 million votes, cases of voter fraud were recorded in the 2016 election. And from 2000 to 2014, only 31 instances out of 1 BILLION votes were detected as fraudulent.
Also, most of the above states that don’t offer vote-by-mail are safe states, which means that having vote-by-mail policies wouldn’t affect much either.
It is also good to know that having a large proportion of voters vote-by-mail will make the election seem more in favor of the Republicans. Because Republican voters are more likely to ignore the ongoing pandemic and vote in person, exit polling and early results may show Republicans taking a lead, before the mail-in ballots are counted.
So, that eliminates virtually any “real” reason why Trump would want to claim voting-by-mail causes fraud and other such issues. The only reason left, then, is Trump’s fear of losing this year’s election.
It is undeniable that the odds are strongly against Donald Trump this year. And for a man who can’t stand losing (he claimed 3-5 million votes were faked in the 2016 popular vote to cover the fact that he lost the popular vote), mail-in ballots are a convenient way to blame his potential loss on. He is simply laying the path to not admitting that he lost in the event that Joe Biden wins. With his refusal to say that he will accept the election results, this is looking like the most likely scenario for Trump to wage war against mail-in ballots.
Make sure you follow this blog for more updates on the upcoming 2020 elections. Stay tuned for more race analyses and predictions!
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