We begin today’s roundup with Caitlin Oprysko’s summary of Donald Trump’s attack on democracy at Axois:
Trump did not elaborate on what any such executive order on mail-in voting would entail.
But his suggestion that he has the right to wade into how elections are conducted in states runs counter to Republican orthodoxy. GOP lawmakers have in the past cited local election control for their opposition to congressional attempts to expand voting rights, as well as institute more stringent security measures.
And any order from the president to curb mail-in voting would surely face a flurry of challenges in court from voting rights groups.
At Rolling Stone, Peter Wade dives deeper into Trump’s extended attack on voting during his press briefing yesterday:
Of course, with his ramblings, Trump proved he is the one without a clue. He then used the story of a postman who was indicted in West Virginia on voter fraud as proof that the system is flawed. Meanwhile, the opposite is true. The mere fact that the worker was caught, as writer Josh Billinson pointed out on Twitter, means that, “The system works!”
The bottom line is: the president is looking to suppress the vote—a long Republican tradition—and to cast doubt on the coming election in case he loses.
Mark Joseph Stern at Slate:
Trump can disparage vote by mail all he wants. But thanks to the Electoral College, every American whose vote actually matters already has the option to vote absentee.
But will their votes count? Here is where both Trump and Republican lawmakers still have leverage. Vote by mail rests on the presumption that the U.S. Postal Service can deliver ballots to election officials promptly. Yet Trump is now sabotaging the USPS just when Americans need it most. On Thursday, the Washington Post published an explosive exposé about a catastrophe currently unfolding at the agency. The newly appointed postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, is a top Trump donor and fundraiser with absolutely no prior experience at the Postal Service. He has imposed strict measures ostensibly meant to cut costs. While carriers previously made multiple trips to ensure the day’s mail is delivered, they are now required to leave mail behind instead of working overtime. Carriers must also shut down mail sorting machines earlier than before, forcing them to sort more mail by hand, an error-prone process. DeJoy’s policies have, predictably, begun to delay mail by several days.
It may be that Trump’s attacks on the right to vote by mail will backfire in battleground states:
A potentially decisive slice of Trump’s battleground-state base — 15 percent of Trump voters in Florida, 12 percent in Pennsylvania and 10 percent in Michigan — said that getting a ballot in the mail would make them less likely to vote in November.
And on a final note, here’s Sue Halpern’s analysis of the issue at The New Yorker:
Even before Thursday’s tweet, Trump was threatening to cut off funding for states that expanded absentee voting. Yet even the Republican leadership, which has spent the past three and a half years making sure that the states will not have sufficient funds to secure our elections, found itself in the uncomfortable position of having to face Trump’s suggestion to delay the election. Their responses, though, could not be matched by this simple rebuke levelled by the seventeen-term Democratic congressman John Lewis, who died on July 17th. “Voting and participating in the democratic process are key,” he wrote in a valedictory essay, which was published on Thursday and timed to coincide with his funeral. “The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it.”