Imagine that
Politico provides us with some data about mail in and early voting that proves Donald Trump is a total fool:
If there was any doubt Donald Trump’s vilification of early voting is only hurting the GOP, new receipts from the midterm elections show it.
Election data from a trio of states that dramatically expanded the ability to cast ballots before Election Day, either early or by mail, demonstrate that the voting methods that were decidedly uncontroversial before Trump do not clearly help either party.
Lawmakers of both parties made it easier to vote by expanding availability of mail and early voting in a politically mixed group of states: Vermont, Kentucky and Nevada.
The states had divergent results but shared a few key things in common. Making it easier to vote early or by mail did not lead to voter fraud, nor did it seem to advantage Republicans or Democrats. In Kentucky, Republicans held on to five of the state’s six congressional districts and a Senate seat. Both Vermont and Nevada saw split-ticket voters decide statewide races, by a gaping margin in Vermont and a narrow one in Nevada.
It reflects a broad lesson for other states that might consider expanding voter access or encouraging voting before Election Day: While voting methods have become deeply polarized by party, expanding access to early and mail voting does not appear to benefit one party over the other. Republicans do not do themselves any favors when they follow in Trump’s footsteps and vilify early voting: It puts more onus on their voters to cast ballots on a single day.
But there is little evidence that expanding voter access tilts elections toward Democrats, either.
“We’ve shown that it is bipartisan,” said Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, a Republican, of his state’s new early voting window. “Both sides are comfortable using it.”
Well, duh. In fact, for many years the Republicans were the one’s pushing early and mail-in voting because it makes sense. Democrats were late to the game. Thrn Trump came along and in setting up the whining excuses he would use in case he lost in 2020 he vilified those forms of voting and trained many Republicans to believe that the only way to win was to vote on election day. And then they had the nerve to complain about long lines after years of making it harder for Black and brown people to vote by insisting they stand in long lines.
The whole thing was idiotic but when you are catering to a narcissistic cretin this is the sort of thing you should expect. But they all went along. Take, for example, Bill Barr, his Attorney General, who spread one paranoid conspiracy theory about these voting methods after another:
In an interview with a Chicago Tribune columnist published last week, Barr argued that people would pay off U.S. Postal Service workers in order to commit election fraud.
“There’s no more secret vote with mail-in vote. A secret vote prevents selling and buying votes. So now, we’re back in the business of selling and buying votes. Capricious distribution of ballots means (ballot) harvesting, undue influence, outright coercion, paying off a postman … ‘here’s a few hundred dollars, give me some of your ballots,’” the attorney general said, according to the Tribune.
This is extremely misleading. Mail ballots are not transferable votes. Election workers verify voters’ identities by matching signatures and verifying identifying information, so that a misdirected ballot — such as those sent to a wrong address — cannot be cast by just anyone.
And it’s not true that mail ballots aren’t “secret” as a rule. States use a variety of precautions to try andkeep people’s absentee votes private: 16 states require the use of secrecy sleeves by law, though other states may choose to use them, as well. Other states have privacy precautions to keep election workers from tying specific votes to the ballot envelopes that are used for verifying voters’ identities…
Claim: Foreign countries could counterfeit mail ballots
In late June, Barr suggested in an interview with NPR that foreign countries could counterfeit mail ballots – days after Trump made the same claim in a tweet.
“There’s so many occasions for fraud there that cannot be policed. I think it would be very bad. But one of the things I mentioned was the possibility of counterfeiting,” Barr said then of voting by mail, adding he didn’t have any evidence of counterfeiting, instead saying it was “obvious.”
Pressed on this claim Sept. 2 in an interview with CNN, Barr said, “I’m basing that on logic.”
Speaking with NBC News on Sept. 9, the attorney general said fraud and coercion are bigger concerns, but that “mail-in ballots do provide a vector for foreign influence.”
“It might even be cheaper for the foreign government to counterfeit ballots in some critical districts than to engage in the other kinds of activities they have,” Barr continued. “What I’m saying is foreign intelligence services are very able. They can counterfeit currency and they have a lot of capacity. And I don’t think counterfeiting a state ballot is particularly challenging for them if they wanted to do it.”
This is baseless, according to experts. As NBC News has reported previously, there are numerous safeguards that keep American elections secure. Absentee ballots are printed on a particular paper stock — by specific vendors — and are traceable, sometimes with preprinted bar codes. They are then sent to registered, eligible voters. Once voters fill them out, most states use the voter’s signature to confirm that the eligible voter cast the ballot. They’re also all paper, allowing for an audit or recount over any concerns.
Claim: We haven’t done widespread mail voting before
“We haven’t had the kind of widespread use of mail-in ballots as being proposed. We’ve had absentee ballots, from people who request them from a specific address. Now, what we’re talking about is mailing them to everyone on the voter list when everyone knows those voter lists are inaccurate,” Barr said in the Sept. 2 interview with CNN.
This is misleading. Before the pandemic, five states (Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Utah, and Hawaii) already voted entirely or almost entirely by mail. In other states, mail ballot options — often called absentee ballots — are widely used. A quarter of the electorate voted by mail in 2018, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commision’s survey of election administrators. It may not be the predominant method of voting nationwide, but in western states including California, Arizona, Washington and Colorado, mail voting is how the vast majority of people vote. What’s more, mail voting and absentee ballots are in essence the same thing. Barr’s criticism — which mirrors the president’s — has to do with election administration — whether states mail ballots to voters or make them request the ballots first…
Claim: Mail elections have found substantial fraud and coercion
“Elections that have been held with mail have found substantial fraud and coercion,” Barr told CNN on Sept. 2.
This is not the case in the U.S. Numerous studies have debunked the notion that there is substantial, widespread voter fraud in American elections, whether those elections are conducted predominantly by mail or otherwise. The five states that vote almost entirely by mail do not report higher rates of fraud or coercion than states that vote in person mostly at polling sites. When incidents of fraud do occur rarely — like a local New Jersey election in May that saw an attempted fraud operation, for example — they are prosecuted.
Weiser said the attorney general’s repeated false claims were “demoralizing” and “damaging” to both the electoral system and the rule of law. But she said she’s been heartened to see people stepping up to rally behind the election system amid a pandemic that’s challenged every facet of it…
Claim: Trump can use federal law enforcement to prevent voter fraud
Asked on Fox News on Aug. 20 if he’d use “poll watchers” to prevent voter fraud, the president said he’d be sending “sheriffs” and “law enforcement” and “hopefully, U.S. attorneys, and we’re going to have everybody and attorney generals.”
Asked about the claim, Barr backed Trump up, saying in the Sept. 2 CNN interview that “it depends on if he’s responding to a particular criminal threat” and said that such authority had been used in the past to enforce civil rights.
This is false. The president cannot legally send federal law enforcement officials to patrol polling places, and he has no authority over local officials. Federal election monitors — often attorneys — have gone to polling sites to enforce voting rights in the past, but they weren’t law enforcement officials.
“It’s actually criminal to have armed federal or military officials in polling places,” Weiser said. “If something like that happened, it would be a coup.”
Yeah well, coup plotting was definitely on the menu.
The GOP’s crusade against democracy has blown back in their faces in any number of ways. But it also degraded the system in such a way that the whole thing is much more vulnerable than it was before. Trump is primarily to blame, of course, but people like Bill Barr certainly helped.