EARLY
VOTING SUGGESTS BIDEN IS GOING TO ANNIHILATE TRUMP, AND THE GOP IS SOILING
ITSELF
The president’s attacks on mail-in voting are
backfiring spectacularly.
BY BESS LEVIN
SEPTEMBER
30, 2020
If you’ve turned on a TV, radio, phone, or computer in the last
several months, odds are you’ve heard Donald Trump ranting
about how mail-in voting is rife with fraud. Obviously he’s taking this
approach not because he actually thinks that’s the case—he and the first
lady requested mail-in
ballots to vote in Florida’s primary—but because he’s trying to sow fear in the
system and undermine the election. And so far, it’s working! While Republicans
once had an edge in requesting mail-in ballots, the president seems to have
successfully scared off his own supporters. Now, Democrats’ ballot requests are
reportedly surging ahead in key battleground states, making Republicans more
than a little bit anxious.
The Washington Post reports that the
Democratic voters who have requested mail-in ballots and sent them back
“greatly outnumber Republicans” in states such as Florida, Pennsylvania, North
Carolina, Maine, and Iowa. A similar trend is apparently occurring in Ohio,
Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin, and GOP leaders and strategists are
freaking out. The disparity has reportedly been “the subject of urgent
discussions” among GOP officials, who are “stunn[ed]” by the margins and fear
the news is not just bad for Trump but for other Republicans on the ballot.
While the party is said to be focused on voter turnout on Election Day
itself, Whit Ayers, a longtime Republican pollster, told
the Post the fear is that older voters, who typically support
Republicans, are concerned about being infected with COVID-19 and could choose
to stay home if the pandemic intensifies in the run-up to November 3 (which
would be yet another reason not to cast a ballot for Trump, whose handling of
the crisis has been shambolic at best).
While they’d likely never say it in public,
privately, officials know they have the president to thank for the skewed
numbers when it comes to mail-in ballots, and Republicans have spent the last
few months frantically trying
to clean up the mess:
...several
Republicans acknowledged privately that there is little upside for their party
in the numbers—and said they are working feverishly to reverse the trend with a
last-minute press with voters. “It’s astronomical,” said one Republican
strategist involved in Senate races who said he was “horrified” by the
discrepancy and, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the
condition of anonymity to describe internal concerns. “You see these numbers in
a state like North Carolina, and how can you not be concerned?”
The issue is reportedly of such concern that
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has twice met with
Trump to urge him to shut the hell up with his talk of fraud and rigged
elections. And while he’s clearly been unable to get through to the guy,
Republicans have a not-so-secret weapon they’re prepared to deploy should
Biden’s edge continue through election day:
Republicans
are...planning to wage a massive post-Election Day legal battle to challenge
ballots that are missing witness signatures, or an outer envelope, or that
arrive with no postmark. Democrats acknowledge that an electorate largely
unused to mail voting could make mistakes that lead to ballots being rejected
in numbers that could make a difference in states where the contest is close.
Election officials are already flagging ballots for such errors. In North
Carolina, for instance, about 5,800 out of roughly 281,000 submitted ballots
have been set aside, the vast majority because of a witness signature
deficiency, according to state data.
“The peril we worry about is what Trump’s
going to try to do if there are a lot of ballots still to be counted on election
night,” said Terry McAuliffe, the former governor of Virginia
and a Biden surrogate. “He’s going to try to say they’re fraudulent.” And, as
Trump suggested during
the first presidential debate, he won’t hesitate to enlist his army of violent
supporters to help him stay in power by whatever means necessary.
