So, Donald Trump keeps saying that Vote-By-Mail is terrible. This video from CNN.com goes over some of Trump’s claims about and debunks them.
Today, I was at this Real Clear Politics page checking out how Biden was doing against Trump when I saw an advertisement from someplace called “VOTE.GOP”.
One can see the advertisement below just to the left of CBS News’ John Dickerson’s really big head:
Let’s zoom in on that ad, shall we?:
VOTE.GOP web advertisement
So, I looked at this ad, and I figured, “Hmm, I live in Arizona, and I guess that they must want me, who lives in Arizona, to visit ‘VOTE.GOP’. Sounds fun!”
I wondered what those GOP folks were up to, so, I clicked on the link, and it took me to this page which looked like this:
They wanted my first and last name, so I typed in a fake first and last name. Then, they wanted me to type in other data such as my full name, complete address, birth date, and email address. I made entered fake versions of all that too. The form then looked something like this:
Yes, “Mickey Mouse” is not my real name.
After I finished entering my fake data, I clicked on the arrow at the bottom of the page. That took me to a second page, which looked like this:
Hmm, what’s that in the middle white section there? The center part got a little fuzzy on the way over here to DK. Let me show a clearer version of that center part of the picture for everyone:
Well, there seem to be three choices in blue. What does that middle one say? Let’s zoom in some more:
Wowie, Zowie! It seems like the middle option says, “Request a Ballot-By-Mail.” The GOP actually went to the trouble of creating a website where they make it easy for people to request an absentee ballot so that they can Vote-By-Mail! Hahahaha!
( However, I would not recommend using this site to get an Absentee Ballot, however, unless you want your email address filled up with emails from Donald Trump begging you for money and telling you just how “sleepy” Joe Biden is.)
If one clicks on the “Request A Ballot By Mail” link, the GOP nicely takes all of the data that one has already entered into the previous form and copies it over to a brand new “Absentee Ballot Request” form that looks like this:
Here’s a zoom of that and a lot of the text really is that faint:
Then, at the bottom of that form, under the section “Ballot Delivery Method”, the web page just has two questions for you before you hit the “SUBMIT” button in order to order a Vote-By-Mail Absentee Ballot. Here’s a zoom-in of the bottom of the page (yes, the web designer challenged GOP’s website has a lot of text that is way too faint).
I will tell you what the two questions are because they are so amazingly faint:
- WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR ABSENTEE BALLOT MAILED?
- DO YOU WANT TO PERMANENTLY VOTE BY MAIL?
They even give you the chance to be on the Vote By Mail list PERMANENTLY! My oh my! What would Donald Trump say?
So, while Donald Trump is telling everyone who will listen what a supposed fraud using “Ballot-By-Mail” is, the GOP’s own VOTE.GOP website is doing all it can to make sure that ordering a Ballot-By Mail is as easy as possible. They apparently went to the trouble of hooking this system up to the balloting process of all 50 U.S. states. Perhaps the GOP figured that only Republicans would click on a VOTE.GOP link, so perhaps they want to make sure that *those* people can Vote-By-Mail.
So, who should we believe? Should we believe Donald Trump when he basically says that Vote-By-Mail is a fraud? Instead, I am choosing not to believe the man who The Washington Post has documented telling over 20,000 lies and misleading statements. Instead, I am choosing to believe what both the Democrats, and apparently also the GOP, are telling people—that there is nothing wrong with Vote-By-Mail. The only things wrong are all of the lies Trump is telling about it, and all of the screwing up Trump’s new Postmaster General has done.
