- cross-posted to:
- nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
Mr. Trump’s latest comments came after he said that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had discussed the issue during their summit on Friday in Alaska.
Edit: Changed link from live-blog of it to main article.
He/republicans have been saying this for… probably decades at this point.
Mail-in/absentee voting, on the surface, is particularly popular with young professionals who are keyed in on politics enough to make their decision weeks before election day AND “smart” enough to realize there is no point in waiting until the last minute. Those obviously skew Democrat. Same with expats.
Then they actually look at it and realize a significant chunk of their base need mail-in votes. People who are too old or infirm to go to a polling station but who will gladly watch fox news 24/7.
And then you have military votes which… get weird. From some limited studies/polls I have seen, military that are stationed in non-combat bases (e.g. Germany or Japan) very much skew Democrat because they have been exposed to other cultures, similar to going to college. Whereas those that are in the nation of whatever brown people we are murdering this week (e.g. Afghanistan and Iraq) skew VERY heavily republican because they are surrounded by propaganda 24/7 and… are generally not the sharpest tools in the shed to begin with.
It won’t happen. What probably WILL happen is a bunch of executive orders to establish big balls as the arbiter of what votes are and aren’t valid regardless of if it is in person or mail-in. And, gasp, so much fraud for whatever candidate is dumb enough to be the face of the Democrats in 2028.
What will likely happen is that STATES will remove mail in voting in places where they lean democrat but keep it in places where Republicans will win. Bare in mind that Trump and the alt right need a scapegoat. Mail in voting is going to be pointed to the reason there is fraud and why Trump and the Republicans should win by default.
Take any “we need to change X about elections” with a grain of salt. Because they will only actually do it if they can either solidify their results or put enough doubt in the system to completely take it over.
The issue is that the states that lean Democrat… tend to have democratic leadership.
And mail in voting doesn’t matter for states like texas that are already gerrymandering away any chance for a Democrat to ever win again. And, because of the electoral college, popular vote doesn’t matter.
They’re not talking about statewide removal, but selectively removing it.
“Mail in voting will only be allowed in counties where 25% of the population is over 10 miles from the nearest polling place. Cities don’t need it because they have one nearby polling place for every quarter million residents, all with a single working machine. The gestapo will be stationed nearby for their safety and no sharing water.”
Again, the issue is that the states that lean Democrat tend to have democratic leadership.
And, to expand on this: This also actually impacts said Democrats.
Even a Colorado (where it is mostly just one “megacity”, the ski towns, and the roads leading to New Mexico that are blue) is not going to accept that. Especially as more and more Democrats want to be the next Newsom (transphobia and all…). This shit would get held up in the courts if not actively defied and there would be lots of active gerrymandering to remove those red districts anyway.
Which is the path we are already on. Red states get redder and blue states get purple but vote for purple candidates that call themselves Demcorats. And then it just depends on whether we have those elections at all.
This is about more than the electoral college. The election they’re working overtime to rig is the upcoming House election. And there are key states like Georgia that have been leaning left but still with red (gerrymandered) state legislature.
Which is still gerrymandering…
Again, short of an outright military occupation, blue states aren’t going to comply with this. And even a lot of the purple states are going to fight tooth and nail because their red leadership knows they are hanging on by a thread.
Ok, maybe I’ve missed something fundamental to your argument for why Republicans aren’t going to use mail in voting restrictions to their electoral advantage. Why do you think blue states need to comply for this to be effective? And why do you think red leadership in purple states won’t benefit from it?
Here is a quick summary of how mail in voting works:
trump can say whatever the fuck he wants. He is still dependent on those local election offices which depend on local county and state governments. So, again, the districts where this would matter are generally blue and democratic and run by Democrats who have both a personal and professional interest in not doing this.
So unless he plans to do a military occupation of all of Denver or LA/SF or whatever for the entirety of November? Those states will tell him to pound sand. And if he is doing a full military occupation… we aren’t having elections anyway.
And same for red leaders in purple states. No, not “Texas is totally secretly purple” but I am talking places like Georgia where it is ACTUALLY democratic voters and not just “moderate” Americans who don’t want to call themselves republicans (and Houston. Houston is actually pretty okay. Less so Austin). That leadership knows the best they can do is avoid rocking the boat because an angry community is a community that votes.
What I DO see happening is exactly what I already said.
Districts that republicans want get accused of fraud with the mail-in excuse. And then big balls is assigned to the case and, what do you know, he just found another 342 million voters for trump… in a local comptroller race.
But the actual mail-in voting won’t be obstructed because, like I said, it actually also benefits republicans very heavily in many districts. Particularly the ridiculously gerrymandered ones where there is a tiny sliver that corresponds to Sister-Grandma Jones who lives 30 miles outside of city limits and can’t walk because she got pregnant again.
The big one is poor folks who’s work / childcare needs don’t allow them the time to wait at polling places.
While I am all for making vote by mail the default rather than a series of hoops you have to hop through to qualify*:
People also need to make themselves much more aware of early in-person voting. It still is a hassle and it is not the be all end all, but people very much should be aware that counties tend to have multiple polling locations up for a month or two in advance where it might take you longer to follow the signage to that room than it does to actually vote.
*: A decade or so back I was out of the country for work during the late Fall. Like a good citizen, I contacted the county and state to figure things out. Because I was in country by a certain deadline, I couldn’t get my ballot mailed internationally. But, because I wasn’t in the US during the entire in-person voting period, I obviously couldn’t vote in person. After a month or so back and forth I was told to call someone who explained that they would mail my ballot to my “temporary address” in the US that just so happened to be a friend of mine and that they could totally forward it to me and I could totally mail it back to them. And then I just told a buddy what bubbles to fill in and drop it off for me.