For some reason, Trump and the Republicans are dead set against mail-in voting, constantly repeating some crackpot theory about how it will lead to massive fraud though studies have repeatedly shown that voting fraud in the US is almost non-existent and that committing such fraud with mail-in ballots is not only hard to pull off but the reward is hardly worth the risk of a felony prosecution.
I think that their opposition is based more on the general attitude of Republicans that making voting harder will discourage poor and minority communities from voting, which is their only hope of clinging on to power, hence all their attempts at making voting more onerous in so many ways. But in the case of mail-in voting they may be hurting their own cause more, since the older white people that make up so much of their base are more likely to want to mail in their ballots.
John Oliver makes the case for mail-in voting but says that states have to start the process now if they want to be ready by the time of the November elections. They also need money to implement it.
Yesterday there were elections in some states, believe it or not, and one notable result is that Steve King, the outrageously racist and xenophobic member of Congress, lost his primary race. He was so bad that even the party establishment shunned him and supported his challenger Randy Feenstra. I suspect that it was not because they abhorred King’s views but that he was in danger of losing his seat to the Democratic challenger J.D. Scholten in November. Scholten almost beat King in 2018.
What Republicans really want is a racist who comes across as urbane and knows how to use dog-whistles and not say out loud what they think, like the way King did.
What Republicans really want is a racist who comes across as urbane and knows how to use dog-whistles and not say out loud what they think, like the way King did.
That is a constant problem for us on the right. Do you realize how hard it is to find an intelligent, discrete, bigot?
For some reason, Trump and the Republicans are dead set against mail-in voting, constantly repeating some crackpot theory about how it will lead to massive fraud though studies have repeatedly shown that voting fraud in the US is almost non-existent
I’m not sure about that. There was that republican operative in North Carolina who was harvesting mail-in votes. So obviously it’s not a non-issue. I think they just want to be the only ones that are cheating.
Some concerns;
That could mean a lot of blank ballots floating around. What could go wrong?
Rob, indeed; there’s this Vox article: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/6/3/21257133/trump-2020-election-meltdown-lawrence-douglas
Some other people who have been discussing about King think he got chucked out was due to him losing all his committee positions, else said he couldn’t direct the money back home anymore. And yes that is an indirect result of his racism that got so bad his colleagues removed him from said committees.
Voting machines are far more easy to bork than mail-in ballots. Therefore, force people to use the machines.
While the Repubs were busy trying to make it harder to vote in person with ID requirements, my memory is that Democrats and Progressives were saying “If you really want to stop voter fraud, it would make more sense to worry about mail-in ballots — there’s a lot more fraud there.” Of course, nobody ever thought they’d really do anything about that, since, as you say, so many of their voters vote that way. Still, hearing the left now say there’s no evidence of mail-in fraud now seems a bit hypocritical.
However, the tendency is well-established among Republicans to make accusations about things they intend to do themselves. And much of the mail-in fraud in the past has come from Republicans — not just in North Carolina, but in cases like “Mom died before she could fill in her ballot, so I just did it in her honor.” So I don’t think it’s wise to completely dismiss their fraud accusations.
brucegee1962 @7, when was that? Because universal vote by mail started in blue states.
Small scale fraud by individuals is not a huge problem. It becomes a problem when fraud in one particular direction is committed on a large scale.
The D.C. election was a clusterfuck of ballots not mailed in time, and not enough vote centers for in-person voting, compounded with the police telling people in line to go home because the curfew started at 7 while the polls were supposed to close at 8. Not to mention people fearing staying to vote and trying to get home without getting arrested. Some people didn’t get to vote until 1:30 am.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/06/dc-election-curfew-police-long-lines.html
@ 3 Rob Grigjanis
Well, mail-in voting should work in developed countries. I notice my voter registration notice shows up regularly—I am not even sure how they got my address, maybe OHIP?—and even the census form arrived promptly.
With regards to the hypocrisy, well, many of the top Republicans have used vote-by-mail themselves frequently, up to and including Trump himself:
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2020/06/03/ronna-mcdaniel-voted-by-mail-multiple-times/
@jrkrideau:
CRA, I believe. There’s been a checkbox on the tax forms for a couple of decades now authorizing the CRA to share your address information with other agencies such as Elections Canada. Legally speaking, every Canadian government agency is supposed to treat its databases as a private walled garden and not share any of it without your permission, even to other government agencies. So to avoid having to do the door-to-door canvassing for every election, Elections Canada now gets your address because the Canada Revenue Agency asks your permission to give it to them.