Tom Sullivan alluded to this below. Here are the details:
President Trump on Thursday said he opposes both election aid for states and an emergency bailout for the U.S. Postal Service because he wants to restrict how many Americans can vote by mail, putting at risk the nation’s ability to administer the Nov. 3 elections.
Trump has been attacking mail balloting and the integrity of the vote for months, but his latest broadside makes explicit his intent to stand in the way of urgently needed money to help state and local officials administer elections during the coronavirus pandemic. With nearly 180 million Americans eligible to vote by mail, the president’s actions could usher in widespread delays, long lines and voter disenfranchisement this fall, voting rights advocates said.
Trump said his purpose is to prevent Democrats from expanding mail-balloting, which he has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, would invite widespread fraud. The president has also previously admitted that he believes mail voting would allow more Democrats to cast ballots and hurt Republican candidates, including himself.
In an interview Thursday with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo, Trump said he opposes a $25 billion emergency injection sought by the U.S. Postal Service, as well as a Democratic proposal to provide $3.6 billion in additional election funding to the states. Both of those requests have been tied up in congressional negotiations over a new coronavirus relief package.
“They need that money in order to make the post office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” said the president, claiming again that mail ballots would be “fraudulent,” one of more than 80 attacks he has made against the election’s integrity since March, according to a tally by The Washington Post. Many of his assertions have been misleading or unfounded.
“If we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money,” he added. “That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting. They just can’t have it.”
“They just can’t have it.”
It’s tempting to see this as just Trump babbling incoherently as usual. Unfortunately, that’s not true:
As Trump has lagged in the polls behind Biden, the president and his allies have ramped up their rhetoric questioning the integrity of the vote and intensified their actions in the courts, revealing a far-reaching strategy to restrict mail voting and challenge the results if he lose
The Republican National Committee and conservative groups are pursuing an unprecedented effort to limit expansion of mail balloting before the November election, spending tens of millions of dollars on lawsuits and advertising aimed at restricting who receives ballots and who remains on the voter rolls.
The party is also working to train as many as 35,000 poll-watchers to monitor both in-person voting and ballot counting, mostly in key battleground states.
And the RNC and Trump campaign advisers are now mapping out their post-election strategy, including how to challenge mail ballots without postmarks, as they anticipate weeks-long legal fights in an array of states, according to people familiar with the plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
The campaign plans to have lawyers ready to mobilize in every state and expects legal battles could play out after Election Day in such states as Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan and Nevada, they said.
Trump’s claims about voting by mail have been echoed by Attorney General William P. Barr, who has repeatedly said without evidence that mail-in voting could lead to a “high risk” of fraud and interference by foreign countries.
At the same time, changes put in place at the U.S. Postal Service by a top GOP donor have sparked mail delays across country, sparking fears that ballots will not be delivered in time to count in November.
Many of the president’s critics say he crossed a line with Thursday’s remarks by admitting his willingness to hold back funds necessary to make the election both secure and accessible to all Americans.
There’s a reason McConnell has not brought the relief bill to the floor. It’s this:
Trump’s opposition to the $3.6 billion in election funding could put him at odds with some Republicans, including Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who has indicated his support for some additional money to help the states carry out the vote during the pandemic.
“We need to have enough money to do our best to be sure that the November elections are held safely and results are available,” Blunt told reporters Wednesday.
These are among the problems we can anticipate:
State and local officials say they need money for protective equipment to prevent infection among poll workers and sanitizing supplies for polling locations, along with paper stock, printing costs and high-capacity ballot scanners for an expected surge in mail voting.
Roxanna Moritz, the auditor and commissioner of elections in Scott County, Iowa, said she may have to choose between offering early-voting satellite locations and paying for a second or even third round of mailing voters absentee ballot request forms.
“Depending on my budget I usually do early voting satellites at five libraries for three full weeks,” Moritz said. She said she received $19,000 in funding from the first relief bill, but “$19,000 goes real quick” when you’re purchasing plastic shields and protective equipment for the more than 60 polling locations her office opened in the primary.
Moritz said she doesn’t understand the president’s position on mail balloting, given how many Republicans are also likely to vote absentee.
“At some point in time, the Trump administration or the Republican Party is going to have to realize that if there are 60 to 75 percent of people voting by mail, those are their voters, too,” she said.
Tom Ridge, a Republican and former homeland security secretary under George W. Bush, said in an interview that with “absolutely no historical anecdotes” for the type of massive fraud that Trump claims could occur, it’s impossible not to conclude that the president’s real concern is losing.
“To subvert the process and discredit the use of absentee ballots is a shameful exercise,” Ridge said.
GOP Rep. Tom Cole, who hails from rural Oklahoma and once oversaw the state’s elections systems as secretary of state, said Thursday that he was not concerned about fraud in the election.
“That just doesn’t happen to the degree that a lot of people seem to think it does,” he said, adding that election administrators are “a very able and honorable group of public servants and usually have operations that are above reproach.”
I don’t think those guys represent the thinking among the highest levels of the Party. It’s pretty clear that Republicans have finally just decided that there’s no margin in even pretending to care about democracy and they will simply rely on cheating to win — and that includes down the ballot.
Honestly, they’ve been trying to suppress the vote since the 1960s, with efforts like “Operation Eagle Eye” all through the 80’s with their freak-out over Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition. More recently their suppression efforts like “True the Vote” have been implemented throughout the country. And, needless to say, conservative, white supremacists spent a full century suppressing the vote in the Jim Crow South. This is what they do.
But I think they’ve entered a new phase in the modern era. The 2000 debacle proved that they can deploy lawyers to every close state if necessary, focusing on those run by Republicans, and basically steal the election in real-time, right out in the open. It’s more like the old Boss Tweed days than Jim Crow, but with obvious similarities.
They are just going to openly cheat, make thin arguments about “fraud” and assume that their own voters will be thrilled to see their “strong” “powerful” thuggish tactics to just take what they can’t earn legitimately.
This makes sense. Today’s Republicans care about one thing: owning the libs. And nothing will own the libs more than outright stealing the election and then taunting the majority of voters with “waddaya gonna do about it.” This is waaay better than winning legitimately. And that’s why they love Donald Trump. He is just as petty, vengeful, crude, stupid and mean as the average playground bully. And they respect that more than anything.