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Postmaster General David Steiner speaks during an interview with the Associated Press at the United States Postal Service headquarters, Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026, in Washington. (Mark Schiefelbein / Ap Photo/mark Schiefelbein)

By Steven Sloan

Sept. 28, 2026

Postmaster General David Steiner says he is “not political,” but his quick move to implement President Trump’s mail-voting restrictions has drawn criticism from Democrats and Republicans.

After the Supreme Court rejected the effort, Steiner said work stopped on a controversial voter-roll portal, while questions persist about the Postal Service’s independence.

The agency faces a $9-billion loss, a looming cash crunch and election-year worries over late mail ballots; Steiner urged voters to send ballots a week early.

WASHINGTON — Long before he was the top official at the U.S. Postal Service, David Steiner was a corporate executive surfing mid-oughts television when he came across Donald Trump on “The Apprentice.”

He was unimpressed.

“If that is leadership, if that’s what we’re telling people that our culture and our media portrays as leadership, we’re screwed,” Steiner, then the CEO of Waste Management, said during a 2007 speech at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. “If that’s leadership, count me out.”

“And for God’s sake,” he added to laughter, “if I have to get my hair to look like that, if I have to do that to be a leader, you can definitely count me out.”

Nearly two decades later, Trump has migrated from reality television to the presidency. And onetime detractors — Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, for example — now loyally execute his agenda.

Trump’s effort to use the Postal Service as a tool to reshape American elections is testing whether Steiner will follow a similar path.

Independent or a Trump ‘pawn’?

When Trump signed an executive order restricting mail ballots this year, Steiner moved quickly to finalize a rule implementing the measure, arguing he had little choice. But after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the effort, Steiner told The Associated Press that work had stopped on one of the plan’s most controversial elements, a government portal for voter rolls.

He refused to endorse the Republican president’s order as sound policy, saying he was focused on implementation and letting the courts ultimately decide the matter.

“I don’t get to decide what rules that are put on us that I decide to accept or not accept,” he said. “We are an independent agency of the executive branch.”

The episode prompted fierce criticism of Steiner for allowing Trump to deploy an agency designed to be shielded from politics.

Jena Griswold, Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state, called him a “Trump lackey.” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, recently asked Congress to deploy observers to ensure postal workers can scan envelopes holding mail ballots without disruption, saying the Trump administration “has attempted to weaponize federal agencies to interfere in our elections, and the leadership at USPS is going along with it.”

Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., accused Steiner of being a Trump “pawn” during a congressional hearing this summer. Dozens of congressional Democrats have pressed Steiner to reveal his interactions with the White House during the development of the mail ballot rule.

Some Republicans have joined in the criticism. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, incensed by abandoned mail, called for Steiner’s resignation and introduced legislation to block him from receiving a bonus.

During a lengthy interview, Steiner seemed surprised at points by his reception in Washington. He insisted he wasn’t a “political person” and said he had no intention of stepping down despite the criticism. He dismissed heated congressional appearances as “theater” at odds with more substantive private interactions on Capitol Hill.

Steiner was chagrined, however, at the mention of his 2007 remarks on Trump, delivered well before he launched a political career. Steiner recalled speaking at the university but said he didn’t remember his comments, acknowledging a tendency to be “flippant.”

“That’s funny,” he said. “I don’t recall it.”

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment on Steiner’s remarks or his stewardship of the Postal Service.

Steiner didn’t follow the traditional path to power in Trump’s Washington

The Postal Service dates to Benjamin Franklin, the first postmaster general, whose portrait and bust are displayed in Steiner’s office overlooking the Washington Wharf. The agency has more than 630,000 employees, dwarfing many Cabinet departments.

While the quickest way to top jobs in Trump’s Washington is often by writing big checks, the 66-year-old Steiner doesn’t appear to have followed that course. He has largely donated to Republicans but also gave to John Kerry’s Democratic presidential campaign in 2004. Unlike his predecessor as postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, Steiner was not a major GOP donor or Trump backer.

Born in Oakland, California, as one of eight children to a father who spent his career at Chevron, Steiner worked in corporate and securities law before moving to Waste Management in 2000. He became CEO in 2004 and ran the company for 12 years. He was also a longtime director at FedEx, where board chairman Brad Martin recalled him as “outcome oriented” and rarely political.

“He’s going to follow the rules. He’s going to follow the law,” Martin said. “I don’t recall us ever talking politics.”

By the time a headhunter contacted Steiner about the postmaster general job, he was largely removed from daily corporate life and initially demurred.

“I talked to my wife, and we both agreed I was happily retired,” he said.

He changed his mind, he said, during a visit to the beaches of Normandy, feeling a sense of civic duty.

Now at the Postal Service, he earns about $346,000 in annual salary along with a relocation bonus that amounts to half his salary, far less than the $17 million in compensation he earned during his final year at Waste Management. His current role is designed to exist one layer removed from the political process, reporting to a board of governors that is selected by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

He was hired in 2025 by a board that was made up of five members, three of whom were Democrats. All but one were appointed by President Joe Biden. That makeup could change as four Trump nominees — all Republicans — await Senate confirmation. Steiner can be fired only by the board.

Steiner said he first met Trump along with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at the board’s urging after he was already selected as postmaster general. Since then, he described a minimal relationship with the White House.

“We don’t fly on the radar,” he said.

That is, until Trump revived his effort in March to crack down on mail voting. Steiner said he “wasn’t in on the development piece” of the order and first saw it about a month before it was signed.

“They gave it to us to say, ‘Have your lawyers look at it, and how do you operationalize it?’” Steiner said.

The portal spurred a massive development effort inside the Postal Service while some states criticized it as federal overreach. A whistleblower report released by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., argued the system was hastily built and riddled with errors, though Steiner said he was confident it could have been unveiled around Sept. 15.

“The heavy lifting was clearly, clearly the IT work,” Steiner said.

Challenges ahead for the Postal Service

Though the Supreme Court dispensed with the rule, the dynamics for the Postal Service don’t get easier.

The agency posted a $9 billion net loss last year, and Steiner has warned it could soon run out of cash unless Congress lifts a $15 billion borrowing cap. Political hurdles have prevented potential cost savings from cutting service or closing some post offices.

And while Trump’s executive order won’t take effect, the Postal Service will still play a critical role in this year’s elections. There are mounting concerns that mail ballots could be rejected for late postmarks. Steiner encouraged voters to get their ballots in a week before the election to avoid problems.

The Postal Service is a rare corner of government still viewed favorably with more than half of Americans, 56%, saying it was doing an “excellent” or “good” job in a Gallup poll conducted last year. That could change if the agency is seen as increasingly political.

Steiner, however, said Americans will judge the Postal Service by their experience of it.

“What they care about is when they get that wedding invitation after the wedding or when they send a package and it disappears,” he said. “If we want to have the trust of the American public, let’s be the best service provider. Everything else is noise.”

Sloan writes for the Associated Press.

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an 7 26

Trump just lost his 19th straight judicial case in an attempt to obtain state voter roles, continuing his failed track record of being rejected by courts when attempting to suppress voters.

“[Department of Justice] loses for the 19th time in efforts to obtain state voter rolls, this time in Colorado, courtesy [sic] of Judge Philip Brimmer, a George W. Bush appointee,” Politico’s Kyle Cheney posted on X on Tuesday.

In the case itself, Judge Brimmer declared that Trump’s administration has no legal authority to supersede the states and try to purge voters from the rolls.

“The authorities cited by the United States do not support its position,” Brimmer wrote on Monday, citing cases including Jud. Watch, Inc. v. Lamone in 2019, State of Ala. ex rel. Gallion v. Rogers in 1960 and Dinkens v. Att'y Gen. of U.S. in 1961.

“In order to state a claim for violation of” existing laws, Brimmer added, “the United States must allege that it requested a ‘record or paper required by section 20701.’” Yet “because the Court finds that Colorado's SVRL is not a record or paper that must be produced pursuant to” existing statues, the court denied Trump’s claim.

“Accordingly, the Court will grant the motions to dismiss of the Secretary, the Common Cause Intervenors, and the Alliance Intervenors, and deny the United States' motion to compel, and dismiss its claims,” Brimmer concluded.

Adam Klasfield, editor-in-chief of All Rise News, posted on X that this is an ironic loss for Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general who was just cleared by the Senate Judiciary Committee for possible confirmation to be full-time attorney general.

“On the day he clears Committee, reports emerge that Todd Blanche lost his 19th consecutive lawsuit seeking sensitive voter data,” Klasfield wrote. “Blanche has no victories in these cases. (Edited post: The ruling was dated Monday, first reported today.)”

Speaking with AlterNet in June, Senior Policy Director for Voting and Fair Representation at Common Cause Dan Vicuña argued that Trump’s various so-called voter reform efforts — including seeking states’ voter rolls — are all part of an effort to steal the midterms.

“What they all add up to is a desire to avoid any accountability to the voters in the midterm elections — to ensure, to preordain the outcome of a midterm that he thinks is going to go badly for him,” Vicuña told AlterNet. “We know, from the Big Lie of the 2020 election to spurring on a violent revolt to overthrow a free and fair election, that he has no respect for democratic norms, for the voice of the people.

This is entirely about his own power and his own ego. He will even invest in protecting that ego and protecting his power at the expense of the needs of the public. People are suffering with high gas prices and affordability issues, and he does not care. All that matters is protecting his power, and he has no interest in whether he does that through democratic means.”

He continued, “I think this all adds up to a desire to ensure that his party stays in power and his ability to do what he wants — to attack vulnerable communities — remains intact.”

As for the attempts to nationalize elections, Vicuña added that the efforts are likely illegal.

“I think some of these attempts to federalize, to nationalize elections are clearly illegal,” Vicuña explained. “You've seen some of that overreach already struck down — attempts to order independent agencies to force a strict voter ID requirement on people. That has been rejected.

Common Cause is in court challenging the latest executive order to turn the United States Postal Service into some election administration agency and to create a further bureaucratic layer to make it more difficult to vote by mail. In terms of the president's authority to order around USPS, it's illegal. In terms of USPS's authority to become some sort of national election administration agency, it far exceeds the legal authority that Congress gave to the postal service. The statute describing what kind of work the postal service would do is about postal service work — processing mail and selling stamps. It has nothing to do with election administration.”

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Election deniers hail Trump’s mail-in voting executive order as a “win” that will leave Democrats “toast”

True the Vote: “The era of trust-but-don’t-verify is over”

Written by Alex Kaplan

:{Published 04/06/26

Figures involved in promoting false claims of widespread election fraud in the 2020 presidential election have praised President Donald Trump’s March 31 executive order regarding mail-in voting, calling it a “major win,” saying he’s “stepping to the plate” and issuing it “while the iron is hot,” and claiming it means “the democrats are toast.” Experts have said that the order, which follows years of right-wing media attacking mail-in voting, stands on dubious legal ground.

## Trump issued a legally dubious executive order on mail-in voting, which has been a frequent target of right-wing media

- On March 31, Trump issued an executive order “that seeks to create lists of U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in each state” and instructs “the U.S. Postal Service to send mail ballots only to verified voters.” As NPR further reported, the executive order “instructs the Department of Homeland Security, working in conjunction with the Social Security Administration, to ‘compile and transmit to the chief election official of each State a list of individuals confirmed to be United States citizens who will be above the age of 18 at the time of an upcoming Federal election and who maintain a residence in the subject State,’” and “then ‘requires the USPS to transmit ballots only to individuals enrolled on a State-specific Mail-in and Absentee Participation List, ensuring that only eligible absentee or mail-in voters receive absentee or mail-in ballots,’ according to a White House fact sheet.” NPR, [3/31/26]

- Election law experts wrote that the executive order is “likely unconstitutional” and cannot be implemented by the 2026 midterm elections.NPR noted that “Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UCLA, wrote on his blog that the order is likely unconstitutional” and that he noted that “the timing here makes this virtually impossible to implement in time for November’s elections.” In a piece at Slate, Hasen wrote that “the order is so underwhelming that it suggests Trump’s real purpose was not its implementation but to create more confusion and litigation around elections, further undermining voter confidence in the integrity of American elections” and putting “into question the rules of an election that is just months away, giving voters reason to fear that the Postal Service could sabotage their ballots.” Another expert told Democracy Docket that the order was “convoluted” and “you can’t make [the Postal Service] the gatekeepers for ballot delivery.” And the director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program told The New York Times that “the president doesn’t have any authority to write the rules that govern our elections. The Constitution gives that power to Congress and to the states, not to the president.” NPR, [3/31/26; Slate, 4/1/26; Democracy Docket, 4/1/26; The New York Times, 3/31/26]

- A previous executive order on elections that Trump issued in 2025 has been blocked by the courts. Multiple federal judges have blocked aspects of the order, which “calls for the Election Assistance Commission to require people to show government-issued proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections,” “directs state or local officials to record and verify the information,” and “seeks to require states to count ballots by Election Day.” Media Matters [10/28/25; The New York Times, 3/25/25, 6/13/25; The Associated Press, 1/30/26]

- Some Trump allies have proposed Trump issue an executive order declaring a “national emergency” to prevent supposed election fraud. An advocate for the proposal, which has reportedly circulated within the Trump administration, said that it “would empower the president to ban mail ballots and voting machines as the vectors of foreign interference.” Trump allies reportedly spearheading the proposed order include attorney Peter Ticktin, a QAnon figure known as Juan O. Savin, and right-wing author Jerome Corsi. Media Matters, [10/28/25, 2/26/26]

- Trump and right-wing media have spread misinformation about mail-in ballots for years. Despite their claims, there has not been evidence of widespread voter fraud or evidence of mail-in ballots being inherently corrupt. Media Matters, [8/21/20; CNN, 3/24/26]

## Election deniers praised the new executive order, calling it a “major win” and claiming “the democrats are toast”

- Podcaster Jovan Pulitzer, whom the Arizona Mirror described as “a favorite of election fraud conspiracy theorists,” called the executive order a “major win” and said that “we’ve got to take the wins as we can get the wins.” Pulitzer called aspects of the order to supposedly force states to make sure their lists of voters are accurate “genius,” and he called the order “the clearest path for getting a thing done.” He described the effort as a “monumental movement” that is “going to create all kinds of hell.” Arizona Mirror, [4/30/21; Rumble, 4/1/26, 4/1/26]

- True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht: While the executive order is “a slippery slope,” “it’s still worth doing. Somebody’s got to do something. And God bless President Trump for at least, you know, doing what he can.” Engelbrecht — who founded True the Vote, which aims to “restore America’s confidence in our electoral process” and was behind the claims of the election misinformation film 2000 Mules — went on to praise Trump “for at least stepping to the plate, putting it in writing, and forcing them to respond.” Additionally, True the Vote posted on Truth Social that the executive order means that “the era of trust-but-don’t-verify is over.” Media Matters, [9/15/22, 12/4/24; Texas Monthly, 8/22/22; True the Vote, True the Vote Now, 4/1/26; Truth Social, 3/31/26]

- A QAnon influencer who goes by Juan O. Savin, and who previously recruited election denial candidates for positions where they would be in charge of election administration, said Trump was “really just kind of forcing all the various agencies to do their job” with the executive order. Savin said that “anybody thinks that this is doing something truly unique and new is probably wrong,” and he claimed Trump “has total authority to direct the actions to the post office” because “there’s no intrusion upon states’ rights.” Savin had previously said his team “wrote up” a different executive order regarding voting that has reportedly circulated within the Trump administration and would declare a national election emergency to crack down on supposed fraud. In a separate interview, Savin acknowledged that Trump’s latest executive order on elections was “not the complete executive order that my team put together in the 17-page executive order” and said the administration “may very well break that up into several pieces.” The Daily Beast, [11/2/22; Media Matters, 10/28/25, 1/26/23; Lawfare, 3/20/26; Rumble, Nino’s Corner, 4/1/26; Rumble, The B2T Show, 3/31/26]

- Seth Keshel claimed the executive order was Trump “striking while the iron is hot and counting on the morons wearing out their welcome with the cheating.” Keshel is a former U.S. Army intelligence captain and blogger who “has become a darling among election deniers by factoring widespread voter fraud — the existence of which has been widely debunked — into his election predictions,” according to The New York Times. He posted on Telegram that “some communist court will strike down his mail-in voting order, which will then be expedited to SCOTUS,” which “is sick of mail-in ballot games and all 6 Republican-appointed justices appear to be ready to squash the concept of late-arriving mail-in ballots.” The New York Times, [10/15/24; Substack, accessed 2/5/26; Telegram, 4/1/26]

- David Clements said the executive order was potentially “great” and “wonderful” and means “the democrats are toast.” Lawfare reported in 2024 that Clements had “criss-crossed the country to evangelize about purported election fraud,” and The Washington Post reported in 2022 that he was “traveling the country trying to persuade local leaders to withhold certification of election results.” In April 1 social media posts, he suggested that the order was not “violating state’s rights” because it “does not create new substantive rules from scratch; it directs federal agencies to implement and enhance existing federal statutory requirements." He also said the order means that “democrats are toast” and the “toys” from “the swamp” — i.e., existing federal election rules, which he claimed “the swamp used … to inflate numbers and commit massive fraud” — now “are being used against them.” On a podcast, Clements said he “got a bunch of texts from other election integrity folks” about the order, and “most of them were bummed” because it did not focus on the “big stuff,” but he said he thinks the order is “brilliant” and could potentially be “a great executive order. It's wonderful.” Lawfare, [10/31/24; The Washington Post, 9/8/22; Telegram, 4/1/26, 4/1/26; Rumble, Absolute Storm, 4/2/26]

- Kris Jurski, “a Florida activist who has promoted election conspiracy theories,” wrote on his Substack that the executive order “proves the message is finally getting through: the voter rolls are the strategic foundation of every election.” Added Jurski, “If the list is corrupt, the outcome can be corrupt — regardless of how the votes are counted.” NBC News, [3/18/26; Substack, 4/5/26]

- On Newsmax, Kari Lake called the executive order possibly “the most important executive order [Trump’s] ever signed.” Lake, a Trump administration official with the U.S. Agency for Global Media and former Arizona GOP candidate who focused intensely on election fraud claims during her campaigns, said on Newsmax that “the people of this country need some relief from the corrupt people running our elections.” The Guardian, [7/31/24; Media Matters, 6/14/23; Newsmax, Rob Schmitt Tonight, 3/31/26]

### Right-wing figures and Trump allies are calling for Trump to declare a “national emergency” to prevent supposed election fraud

10/28/25 9:54 AM EDT

### Election deniers have reportedly coordinated with the Trump White House on a draft executive order declaring a “national emergency” over elections

02/26/26 5:47 PM EST

### “Exactly what we were asking him to do”: Election deniers cheer FBI's raid of Fulton County election center

02/05/26

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AN 3 26

LOST ON FLA STATE REP THO MAX ENDORSE, VOTED BY MAIL AND

Melania and Barron Trump also busted using 'mail-in-cheating' method to vote in Florida - Alternet.org

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On Tuesday, January 14, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its 7-3 ruling in Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections. Overturning a 7th Circuit Court decision, the justices found that Rep. Michael Bost (R-Illinois) could challenge a state law that allowed the counting of mail-in ballots that arrived after Election Day as long as they were postmarked before Election Day.

The two dissenters were Democrat-appointed Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. However, Justice Elena Kagan, appointed by former President Barack Obama, voted with the six GOP-appointed justices and joined Justice Amy Coney Barrett in a concurring opinion.

Journalist Oriana González examines the decision's possible results in an article for NOTUS, noting Democratic concerns that it could lead to an avalanche of election-related lawsuits ahead of the 2026 midterms.

"In 2022, Bost sued the Illinois State Board of Elections, challenging a law that allowed the counting of mail-in ballots that arrived after Election Day," González explains. "Lower federal courts initially dismissed the lawsuit, arguing that because Bost won his election with 75 percent of the vote, he lacked standing to bring the case. But on Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, in a 7-2 decision, that Bost had a right to sue because 'he is a candidate for office. And a candidate has a personal stake in the rules that govern the counting of votes in his election'…. Bost said he feels confident that judges will rule in his favor moving forward."

Rep. Mike Kelly, a Pennsylvania Republican, believes the ruling "sets the stage" for more challenges to mail-in ballots.

Tom Fitton, president of the right-wing legal group Judicial Watch, described the Bost decision as "the most important Supreme Court election law ruling in a generation.”

But some Democrats are highly critical of the decision.

In her dissent, Jackson — an appointee of former President Joe Biden — wrote, "Alarmingly, today's ruling also has far-reaching implications beyond Bost's election, since dispensing with our usual standing requirements opens the floodgates to exactly the type of troubling election-related litigation the Court purportedly wants to avoid."

Jackson also wrote that the ruling "complicates and destabilizes both our standing law and America's electoral processes." And Obama appointee Sotomayor concurred.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) was critical of the High Court's decision as well and warned, "We're assuming that Republicans are going to do everything possible to prevent a free and fair election from taking place in November 2026."

*Read the full NOTUS article at this link.

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an sn 11 25

If Ohio was a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump World, faithfully executing the corrupt orders of an unforgiving boss, would Ohioans even blink an eye?

Trumpian taskmasters in the Ohio Statehouse already execute public policy based on the dictates of the MAGA king. So, what is the difference?

Unquestioning obedience to the convicted felon drove Ohio Republicans (with obliging Democrats) to intensify congressional district manipulation and give Trump the gerrymandered advantage he demanded ahead of the 2026 elections.

The boss also ordered red states to make it harder for voters to cast ballots in the midterms. Less turnout is less threatening. Trump fears the results of a referendum on his regime.

The Ohio Senate is in his corner.

State Sen. Theresa Gavarone, as usual, leads the anti-voter brigade on the pretense of election integrity.

She doesn’t even come up with new excuses to erect barriers to voting anymore.

The Bowling Green Republican, behind one of the strictest voter ID laws in the country, longs to get on right-wing radar by going more extreme than MAGA Republicans in Congress to disenfranchise voters with made-up election fraud remedies unsupported by evidence.

Last week, the Ohio Senate passed one of Gavarone’s bills in record time. But Ohio Senate Bill 293 was a rush order from Trump World.

It came with an explicit warning: get rid of mail-in voting or risk the wrath of Trump’s Department of Justice in court.

The only U.S. president who conspired to overturn an election he lost, with lies about widespread mail ballot fraud, is laying the groundwork to delegitimize another election with the same fantastical and false claims about vote-by-mail fraud.

He is again sowing baseless doubts about secure mail-in voting systems used by nearly 1 in 3 Americans in 2024.

All it took for Ohio Senate Republicans to go along was a little federal pressure/extortion.

For no compelling reason, they voted to stop counting legitimate mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day in Trump-friendly legislation that mirrored his legally shaky executive order in March.

The EO decreed ballots received post-election invalid and commanded voters produce birth certificates or passports as proof of eligibility — *to create unwarranted obstacles for millions of Americans who simply want to vote.

Gavarone co-sponsored correlating legislation, Ohio Senate Bill 153, to impose the same burden on Ohioans.

It appears to be on the fast track for passage.

Meanwhile, Ohio Senate Bill 293 is headed to the Ohio House to become another voter suppression law in the state.

It would arbitrarily eliminate the mail-in ballot “grace period” in Ohio and cause legal ballots to be thrown out.

But the eminently absurd Gavarone insisted, “we want all valid votes to count, and the process needs to be done on Election Day” or we will turn into pumpkins at the close of polls.

Republican lawmakers who previously shortened the deadline (from 10 to four days) in which those late-arriving ballots, postmarked by Election Day, were counted now embrace Trump’s edict not to processany ballot received past Election Day — lest unchecked power be checked by incoming ballots.

In 2024, almost 10,000 mail-in ballots from eligible Ohio voters arrived in the four-day window that would be eliminated in SB 293.

That’s 10,000 citizens, enough to flip a race, summarily disenfranchised.

Tough luck if you’re a registered voter in good standing, particularly one who is elderly or disabled or lives in rural areas, and postal delays beyond your control cancel your vote.

It’s crazy. Over a million Ohioans used mail-in ballots to vote in the last presidential election. That’s about 17% of the nearly 5,900,000 votes cast.

More registered Republicans voted by mail in Ohio in 2024, than Democrats did.

Voters 65 and older, Ohio’s biggest age demographic, were far and away the biggest users of mail-in voting, returning roughly 520,000 ballots by mail a year ago.

Why not vote from the convenience of home and bypass lines at the polls?

Voting by mail, which surged to record rates in the 2020 election, is still pretty popular and a majority of Americans favor allowing the option to make it safer, easier and more reliable for people to cast ballots.

They don’t buy Trump’s ravings about mail voting fraud which, in truth, is exceedingly rare.

But after Democratic victories in off-year elections last week Trump again railed baselessly about “rigged” mail voting and called on congressional Republicans to ban it outright “except for military, far away military, and people that are very sick.”

He is seeding the ground for rejection of midterm election results he doesn’t like in a throwback to 2020.

We’ve seen this movie before.

Ohioans should know the part their Statehouse politicians are playing in the Trump sequel, how they dutifully execute legislative assaults on voting rights (or else) to enable rule by fiat not the ballot box.

So is the Statehouse is working for Trump World instead of us?

Mia Lewis, of Common Cause Ohio, asked Trumpian taskmasters directly in recent testimony against SB 293.

“Senator Gavarone often asks, ‘Isn’t even just one instance of fraudulent vote too many?’ Of course. It could theoretically skew the result. Luckily, this is so vanishingly rare it has not had and could not have had any impact. *But if someone who is eligible to vote — who wants to vote, does everything legally to vote — if they have their voted ballot cast aside uncounted, isn’t that too many, Senator Gavarone?”

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AN 8 25

The Atlantic reports courts will not likely let President Donald Trump destroy mail-in voting, but that won’t stop him from gumming up elections.

The president appears to have taken his most recent idea for ending mail-in voting from Russian authoritarian Vladimir Putin, who told him “you can’t have an honest election with mail-in voting,” according to a Fox News interview with host Sean Hannity.

Days later, Trump posted on Truth Social that he would ban “MAIL-IN BALLOTS” in an “EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.” He later said in an Oval Office press conference that: “We’re going to end mail-in voting. It’s a fraud.”

Such an order would have little legal power, writes Atlantic reporter Quinta Jurecic. “The American system for administering elections is highly decentralized: The work of deciding how people should vote and of helping them do so is largely carried out at the state and local levels, with the federal government playing only a minor role.”

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Banning mail-in ballots is a presidential power that doesn’t exist, but Jurecic said Trump can still make an “enormous mess” by “MacGyvering” a clumsy workaround. The Justice Department could threaten state and local election officials with “baseless investigations” in an effort at intimidation.

“Prosecutors would encounter the small problem that no criminal statutes obviously apply to an election official legally handing out mail-in ballots. But the risk of a criminal investigation, even a meritless one, could still frighten election administrators,” Jurecic said.

Trump’s “hatred of mail-in ballots dates back to 2016,” said Jurecic, when he complained of Colorado’s shift to all-mail voting. He also tried to claim that “fraudulent” mail-in votes stole his presidency — an idea that become a key claim of the Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election.

But his animosity is knocking up against Republican voters’ increasing use of mail-in voting in their own elections, and Jurecic, adding that Trump’s advisors “may have to struggle to contain him.”

“The risk created by Trump’s attacks on mail-in ballots is less that Trump will actually succeed in limiting access to the franchise and that such limitations will actually tilt the playing field toward Republicans, and more that the president will … kick up enough doubt and confusion that a significant number of Americans no longer trust an election’s results,” Jurecic said.

Read the full Atlantic report at this link.

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maddow 3 scams on election. putin says no mail in votes. texas gerry,

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-putin-voting-machines-mail-ballots-executive-order-rcna225608

Aug. 19, 2025,

By Ryan Teague Beckwith, Newsletter Editor

President Donald Trump is talking about changing voting laws again, citing a recent conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

After a summit in Alaska last week, Trump said Putin talked with him about election integrity. He then posted on Truth Social about plans to change voting machines before next year's midterms and again raised the issue on Monday while meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders at the White House — ostensibly to talk about peace in Ukraine.

But what exactly did Putin tell Trump, and what is Trump now trying to do? And were either man's claims accurate? Here are some answers.

What are Russian elections like?

Multiple outside groups have labeled Russian elections as illegitimate. In 2023, Russian Election Monitor, a group of European scholars, former and active politicians and public officials, found "a serious deterioration" in voting rights in Russia. The group cited last-minute changes to laws, attempts to complicate election observation, a lack of free debate, pressure on candidates and voters and a lack of independent election commissions. Some parts of Russia use electronic voting systems, which have been found to be vulnerable to manipulation and coercion. The European Parliament condemned Russian elections as "illegitimate and undemocratic."

Why would Putin, of all people, lecture the U.S. on voting?

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We don't know for sure. But as a former KGB agent, Putin was trained on how to emotionally manipulate people he's dealing with. (He famously brought his black Labrador to a meeting with then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is afraid of dogs.) Telling Trump that the 2020 election was rigged against him seems like an obvious way to get on his good side.

What did Putin say?

According to Trump, "he said 'your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting.' He said, 'Mail-in voting, every election —no country has mail-in voting. It's impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections.' And he said that to me because we talked about 2020. He said, 'You won that election by so much.'"

Is any of that true?

No.

According to a 2024 count by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 34 countries have mail-in voting, including Canada, Denmark and Germany.

:{:{An analysis of all known voter fraud cases in the U.S. from 2000 to 2012 found only 491 cases of mail voter fraud — during a period in which literally billions of ballots were cast.}:

Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Judges found various claims made by Trump and his allies to be without merit in more than 60 cases, and a statistical analysis by researchers from Harvard and Cambridge University found no evidence to back up the claims.

What did Trump say he would do next?

Trump said he was going to "lead a movement" to get rid of mail-in ballots and what he called "Highly 'Inaccurate,' Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES, which cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election." He said he would sign an executive order to "help bring HONESTY" to the 2026 midterm elections.

What does he mean, exactly?

Honestly, it's hard to say. At one point he said he was required to give his license plate number to vote, which is not true. But in past remarks, Trump has called for nearly all voting to be done on paper ballots, counted by hand, on Election Day, with the winner declared on election night.

There are few problems with those proposals:

Nearly all U.S. voters already vote on paper or receive some kind of verified paper receipt. The 1.3% who don't live in Louisiana or parts of Indiana, Nevada, Tennessee and Texas, according to Verified Voting.

Hand-counting ballots is slower, less accurate and more expensive than using machines. All U.S. voting machines have to pass rigorous tests that show they can accurately count at least 10 million votes.

Early voting, whether by mail or in-person, is now legal in all but three states (Alabama, Mississippi and New Hampshire). In the 2024 election, more than 85 million votes were cast before Election Day, a little more than half of all ballots.

It would be extremely difficult to count all ballots cast on election night since there are nearly 10,000 separate jurisdictions, each with its own races for everything from the school board to the state legislature.

How flattery plays a role in Trump’s foreign affairs after Putin summit

06:47

Could Trump really change voting laws by executive order?

The answer here should be a clear no, but we live in unprecedented times. Under the U.S. Constitution, elections are handled at the local levelaccording to state laws, though Congress can set minimum national standards for elections. The federal role typically involves giving guidance to elections officials and offering grants to upgrade equipment.

At a practical level, making the kinds of massive changes to election law that Trump envisions would be expensive and take time to set up, even if every local and state official went along with it. The midterms are in about 14 months, which means there's a very narrow window for any changes to be made, as officials would need to buy, install and test machines and hire and train appropriate staff.

Trump did not say he would ask Congress to pass a law, which would be the only way to appropriate money, so it appears that he may simply try to order the states to make these changes by executive order, which would mean a flood of political pushback and lawsuits that would only shorten the amount of time available. As an example, one reason Louisiana has not replaced its outdated voting machines is that it would cost $105 million.

In his Truth Social post,Trump argued that states are "merely an 'agent' for the Federal Government" in counting votes and "must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them." Suffice it to say that this is not the traditional mainstream view of the U.S. Constitution, checks and balances or federalism.

Are there any problems with U.S. voting that could be addressed?

Sure. State and federal lawmakers could help replace those voting machines in Louisiana and parts of other states that don't have a voter-verified paper trail. More states could join a consortium of 25 states plus D.C. that shares voter registration information to track people who moved. State lawmakers could change laws that prevent officials from prepping early ballots to be counted, which would speed up results on election night.

Any other changes?

A major political figure could stop using his bully pulpit to baselessly attack the integrity of the U.S. voting system.

Ryan Teague Beckwith

Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for MSNBC. He has previously worked for such outlets as Time magazine and Bloomberg News. He teaches journalism at Georgetown University's School of Continuing Studies and is the creator of Your First Byline.

8 25

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an 10 24

Arizona was once a deep-red state where Sen. Barry Goldwater and his successor, Sen. John McCain, were regarded by fellow Republicans as the gold standard for conservatism. But Arizona has since evolved into a swing state.

Arizona Democrats are winning a lot more statewide races than they were 30 or 40 years ago, and far-right MAGA Republicans like Kari Lake have been openly disdainful of the Goldwater and McCain conservatives who once dominated the state.

Arizona is among the battleground states where former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have been especially aggressive in their campaigning. And a contentious U.S. Senate race that puts Lake against Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona) will be closely watched on Election Night.

According to Phoenix's ABC 15 News, fire and police officials are investigating a fire in a U.S. Postal Service mailbox that included some mail-in ballots. Arson is suspected.

The Phoenix Fire Department, in an official statement, said, "Approximately 20 electoral ballots were damaged, along with additional miscellaneous mail.

"What led to the fire is not yet known," ABC 15 News reports, "but Phoenix Police Department says Phoenix Fire Department's Arson Investigation Taskforce is performing a criminal investigation with postal inspectors and police. ABC 15 reached out to election officials for information impacting those whose ballots may have been damaged."

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said his office is "waiting for details from law enforcement."

Richer told ABC 15 News, "We encourage all voters who used that mail box in the last 36 hours to check the status of their ballots at https://BeBallotReady.Vote. Successful delivery is usually reflected on that website within 72 hours. Voters should be aware that tomorrow, October 25, is the last day to request a replacement ballot."

---

trib

The League of United Latin American Citizens plans to request a federal investigation into raids Attorney General Ken Paxton conducted this week as part of what he called an “ongoing election integrity investigation.”

Gabriel Rosales, Texas LULAC’s state director, said in a statement that Paxton carried out the raids 11 weeks before the 2024 elections “to suppress the Latino vote through intimidation and any means necessary to tilt the electoral process in favor of his political allies.”

Agents raided the home of Cecilia Castellano — the Democrat running to succeed state Rep. Tracy King, D-Uvalde — and confiscated her phone as part of the search, according to Rosales. Republicans see that seat, which Gov. Greg Abbott carried by nearly 6 percentage points, as their best potential state House flip in November.

Law enforcement also searched the homes of at least five other Latino individuals, all of whom were working on Castellano’s campaign and three of whom are members of Texas LULAC, Rosales added. LULAC is a non-partisan, volunteer-based Hispanic civil rights organization headquartered in Washington.

The group is in the dark about the details of any accusations, Rosales said, “but there's none that we’ve been privy to that merits an investigation like this that wastes taxpayers’ money.”

“It is disgraceful and outrageous that the state of Texas, and its highest-ranking law enforcement officer is once again using the power of his office to instill fear in the hearts of community members who volunteer their time to promote civic engagement,” Rosales said in a statement.

Paxton announced on Wednesday that his office executed “multiple” search warrants in Frio, Atascosa and Bexar counties the day prior as part of an investigation into allegations of “election fraud and vote harvesting that occurred during the 2022 elections.” A two-year investigation, Paxton said, provided “sufficient evidence” to obtain the search warrants.

“Secure elections are the cornerstone of our republic,” Paxton said in a statement. “We are completely committed to protecting the security of the ballot box and the integrity of every legal vote. This means ensuring accountability for anyone committing election crimes.”

Paxton’s office did not reply to a request for additional information. His announcement did not detail the targets of the raids, the number of raids, or the reason specific homes were searched.

“It’s still very vague,” Rosales said in an interview. “That’s what’s really unnerving about the whole situation.”

According to one person whose home was raided, Rosales said, law enforcement suggested that he was accused of possessing “illegal voter information” — a claim that he denied and called politically motivated, saying voter information is publicly available.

“There’s no there, there,” Rosales said. “They’re using every tool in the toolbox to intimidate our people from coming out to the polls.”

The Texas Tribune

Rosales said he was working with the group’s national leaders and attorneys to draft a formal complaint with the U.S. Justice Department requesting a federal investigation into Paxton’s raids.

The attorney general’s office was asked to investigate the allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting during the 2022 elections by 81st Judicial District Attorney Audrey Louis, a Republican whose district includes Frio and Atascosa counties.

---

===

guard

one of the United States’ oldest Latino civil rights organizations is raising alarm after several of its members had their homes raided as part of a voter fraud investigation by the Texas attorney general’s office.

The League of United Latin American Citizens (Lulac) wants the Department of Justice to investigate raids on at least three of its members in Texas. Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, said in a statement last week his office had executed multiple search warrants in Bexar county, which includes San Antonio, as well as neighboring Frio and Atascosa counties as part of an ongoing, two-year investigation. The office did not provide details of the investigation or respond to a request for comment.

No one has been arrested and the exact nature of the investigation remains unclear. But the searches themselves were designed to intimidate, Lulac officials said.

‘A different level than 2020’: Trump’s plan to steal election is taking shape

Read more](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/12/trump-overturn-result-presidential-election-vote)

“They’re trying to intimidate our folks that are out registering people,” said Lulac’s president, Roman Palomares. “What they’re trying to do is they’re trying to intimidate, and then that has repercussions down the line here, where folks read about that and they go, ‘God, I mean, if they’re doing that to her and I’m a registrar, God, how are they going to go after me?’”

A justice department spokesperson said the agency was aware of the matter and declined to comment further.

Lidia Martinez, 87, said nine officers from the attorney general’s office showed up at her front door at 6am last Tuesday and spent hours searching her home as she watched in her nightgown. She said they told her they were there because she had filed a complaint that senior citizens were not receiving their ballots.

Martinez was taken outside in front of her neighbors while officers searched the house, she said. Eventually, the officers left with her laptop, planner and cellphone.

View image in fullscreen

Lidia Martinez, center, a volunteer and great-grandmother whose home was searched, center, speaks at a news conference for Lulac on Monday. Photograph: Eric Gay/AP

“I asked them why are you all doing this? And he said because there was fraud,” she said. “I said I’m not doing anything illegal. All I do is help the seniors.”

Texas has extremely strict rules around mail-in balloting. Only those who are sick, out of the county on election day, confined in jail, giving birth within three weeks of election day, or aged 65 and older are authorized to request a mail-in ballot. Anyone who assists someone in requesting a ballot must fill out a form indicating they assisted. Anyone who assists the voter in returning the actual ballot, other than a family or household member, must sign the envelope with the ballot noting their assistance.

Texas leans on new voting law to reject thousands of ballot applications

A judge asked Trump to prove claims about mail-in votes and fraud — it didn’t go well Alex H

an 820 Louisiana Republican wants to force people to submit a positive COVID test to vote by mail

Matthew Chapman / Raw Story August 18, 2020

According to the Daily Advertiser, Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin is proposing a rollback of voter eligibility to cast an absentee ballot ahead of the November election. “Ardoin’s new plan will…

direct citizen action 180 mailboxes pulled; workers have plan on ballots; [remember mUslim ban airposts]

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/how-activists-and-citizen-journalists-can-revive-the-american-promise/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/house-democrats-summon-trump-postmaster-general-to-explain-sabotages/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/mark-meadows-claims-lack-of-evidence-of-widespread-voter-fraud-is-somehow-the-definition-of-fraud/

on CNN’s State of the Union, host Jake Tapper talked to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows about the Trump administration’s latest favorite talking point: voter fraud. Specifically,voter fraud via voting by mail. In this case, Meadows came out swinging against the notion that states should send ballots to all registered voters. In perhaps the most mind-blowing exchange, Tapper (accurately) pointed out that there is no proof of “widespread voter fraud,” and Meadows said, “there’s no evidence that there’s not, either.” Then, Meadows added: “That’s the definition of fraud, Jake.”

How did we get there? Let’s check out the now-viral clip below.

While already talking about voter fraud, Tapper asked Meadows to get specific, using voting by mail in Florida versus Pennsylvania as examples, as Trump, as well as First Lady Melania Trump, requested their absentee ballots to vote in Florida just last week. In fact, Trump even voted absentee for Florida’s March primary.

“Can you tell me the difference between voting by mail in Florida and, say, voting by mail in Pennsylvania?” The CNN host asked Meadows on Sunday morning. “What’s the difference?"

meadows sidestepped the question, saying he wasn’t familiar with Pennsylvania’s system, but claimed he and Trump don’t have problems with what he described as “no-excuse absentee” voting. He went on to say that he does have a problem with “sending millions of ballots across the country to sometimes empty mailboxes,” noting that he doesn’t want his vote to be “disenfranchised.” Obviously, the word “disenfranchised” coming from the mouth of any Republican is a bold move given the systemic disenfranchisement of Black and brown voters across the nation, but the back and forth didn’t jump on that particular word choice.

Meadows further suggested the “problem” is that people are “looking at just sending out ballots,” using California as an example. Tapper cut in there and argued that California has already done that for the majority of its population, at about 75%, as well as Oregon, Utah, and Washington state, without problems.

“Now there are four states that are adding to the sending out ballots to every registered voter. I understand that that’s a concern that you’re claiming,” Tapper stated.

Meadows countered this by asking Tapper, “Isn’t it a concern to you?” He continued by claiming that voter rolls are “inaccurate” with “people just moving around” and, in his words, “the people that die off.”

Tapper again cut off this argument, this time simply saying: “But there’s no evidence of widespread voter fraud.”

To which Meadows offered up the response that has now gone viral for its absolutely head-scratching, empty wordplay: “There’s no evidence that there’s not either. That’s the definition of fraud, Jake.”

Here is that clip....[trump nevada rant]

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/cnns-jake-tapper-busts-trump-chief-of-staff-mark-meadows-live-on-air-for-lying-about-disabling-usps-sorting-machines/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/nightmare-scenario-conservative-paints-frightening-portrait-of-trump-and-barr-stealing-the-election

w/ Donald Trump doing everything he can to disrupt mail-in voting before the November 3rd election day, conservative Matt Lewis suggested the country could be faced with a “nightmare scenario” where the media calls the election for the sitting president before all the ballots are tallied, setting the stage for the president to refuse to step aside.

In his column for the Daily Beast, Lewis noted that the president’s attacks on mail-in votes could backfire by discouraging older voters who might support him from participating and that Biden will likely be the recipient of the majority of those votes.

:{And that could be the problem that sets in motion a power struggle based upon the speed each state employs to count them — and if Attorney General Bill Barr steps in and lends the president a hand.

As Lewis notes, “Although we can expect that an influx of tens of millions of Biden ballots will start piling up long before Election Day, states have differentlaws regarding when the mail-in ballots can be counted. And some states—includingMichigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—don’t allow tabulations to begin until election day, which is to say you can’t keep a running count. "

admitting counting could be “tedious, complicated, and time-consuming,” Lewis said it is all but certain that the president will seize upon anything showing him leading to proclaim victory.

“If you’re watching the news on election night—the way we’ve always done it—the first votes to be counted will very likely be Trump votes,” he explained. “Now here’s where things go from messy to scary. As previously noted, we have all been trained to watch the news on election night—and to expect someone to be declared the victor. Even if we manage to overcome this age-old reflex, broadcasters will be compelled to show the only results they have—the Election Day results. This could give the false impression that Trump has shocked the world again. It’s absurd to think they won’t do this.”

As Lewis sees it, Trump would then appear f before the nation and “unilaterally declare victory” setting off an unprecedented battle with Lewis extrapolating, “This may sound pathetic and obvious and lame and defensive on his part, but this is Donald Trump we’re talking about. And maybe 40 percent of the country will believe him. After all, they’re watching the results! And Trump has been warning about voter fraud for months!”

Added to that, the conservative columnist said there will likely be reports of some voter fraud throughout the country which will add credence to Trump’s claim of major voting fraud that he will undoubtedly use in his defense.

“It’s easy to imagine Trump’s attorney general casting aspersions on any ballots that aren’t counted on Election Day and issuing a report declaring Trump the victor. If that happens, I’m 100 percent confident the brave Republicans in the U.S. Senate will stand up to Trump. (‘Uh, we’re gonna have to wait and see,’ said sycophantic Senator X, ‘but it does look like Democrats are trying to overturn the results of a fair election.),” he wrote, before warning, “Our union is tenuous as it is. The last thing we need is for another crisis over legitimacy.”

You can read more here (subscription required.)

8/13 an

trump openly admits to sabotaging Post Office to boost his re-election chances

Brad Reed / Raw Story August 13, 2020

President Donald Trump told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo on Thursday that he is blocking needed funds to the United States Postal Service as a way to thwart Democrats’ efforts to…

an 820 said trump 180 in mail vote?

while some of President Donald Trump’s supporters shied away from defending the president’s autocratic suggestion to delay the upcoming election, many national and state right-wing radio hosts supported the president and launched attacks on mail-in voting.

Voter fraud, including fraud involving mail-in ballots, is extremely rare. How rare? NPR found that while 250 million ballots have been cast by mail over the last 20 years, there have just been 143 criminal convictions for election fraud related to mail ballots, a fraud rate of 0.00006%.

Like they've done for years, right-wing radio hosts are spreading lies about voter fraud to damage faith in our elections and suppress turnout. But now the stakes are higher, with a record number of Americans expected to rely on mail-in voting given the coronavirus pandemic.

Here are just a few examples of national and state right-wing radio hosts discrediting mail-in voting:

Mark Levin claimed, “The Democrats don’t just want it easier to vote, they want it impossible to know who’s voting,” later stating, “The president’s right about this. He’s simply right about this.”
Sean Hannity claimed, “I’m always nervous. You know, somebody called me yesterday and said, ‘Yeah, I have a family member that’s been dead for nine years and not only got one ballot but two ballots.’"
Philadelphia-based host Dom Giordano interviewed a local Republican Party leader to talk about the “dilemma” of people like Trump warning about fraud and thus potentially inadvertently suppressing turnout among Republicans. Giordano claimed, “Each day, each hour that goes by, I worry about fraud. We have people so determined to stop this president, it’s second to none in history. They will break the law I’m convinced.”
In an interview with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Ohio host Bob Frantz attempted to explain Trump’s tweet, arguing, “He, of course, is just trying to highlight the threat of an all mail-in election -- the fact that it is going to be ripe with fraud and opportunities to cheat the system.”

Also: A CBS report on mail-in voting was missing key detailsabout Trump sabotage of the Postal Service. Numerous right-wing outlets touted the report as evidence that the mail-in voting process is supposedly rife with fraud. In reality, the CBS piece proved nothing of the sort; it simply illustrated that the Postal Service has trouble delivering mail on time for numerous reasons, including the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and that it might affect when and how ballots are counted. But right-wing media were easily able to spin the segment into propaganda against vote by mail because the report lacked vital context: The Postal Service’s delivery troubles are largely due to actions taken by the Trump administration.

Sinclair watch: Trump and his administration have weakened the United States Postal Service, enacting policies leading to slower mail delivery ahead of a presidential election in which mail-in voting will be heavily used. But Sinclair’s national reporters repeatedly failed to mention the administration’s efforts in at least six segments covering -- and in two cases advancing -- the president’s false attacks on the integrity and efficacy of voting by mail.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/friday-night-massacre-at-us-postal-service-as-postmaster-general-a-major-trump-donor-ousts-top-officials

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trumps-s-on-the-postal-service-are-hurting-democracy-and-thats-the-point/

experts debunk Trump’s claim he has the right to stop mail-in voting with executive order: ‘No power — none’

Jake Johnson / Common Dreams

President Donald Trump ramped up his baseless attacks on mail-in voting late Monday by threatening to issue an executive order curbing the practice ahead of the November elections, a move…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/watchdogs-demand-investigation-into-voter-suppression-tactics-by-trump-donor-running-usps/

salon

Multiple government watchdog groups called for an investigation into newly-installed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy over concerns that his actions since taking over the agency could amount to “voter suppression tactics.”

DeJoy, a major Trump and Republican Party donor, has sparked widespread concern after pushing for an “operational pivot” at the cash-strapped agency. Advocates have expressed fears about a mail slowdown, while lawmakers called out DeJoy for reportedly planning service cuts in violation of federal law.

The watchdog groups Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and Common Cause Wisconsin called on Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., the chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which oversees the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), to investigate DeJoy’s actions since taking over.

“In his first month on the job, the postmaster general has already taken steps that could undermine efficient voting by mail in November,” the groups said in a letter to Johnson. “According to internal USPS memos, DeJoy directed USPS employees that overtime would be limited and that they were prohibited from making late trips in order to ensure timely delivery. DeJoy offered these changes as a way to cut costs, but USPS has acknowledged that they will likely result in delayed mail delivery.”

The letter cited a recent report by the USPS Office of Inspector General highlighting problems “related to the timeliness of ballots being mailed to voters” in the Wisconsin primary earlier this year.

The groups called on Johnson to hold oversight hearings in “possible voter suppression tactics” by DeJoy, as well as the deployment of Homeland Security forces to cities like Portland.

“Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf’s decision to deploy federal officers to quell political protests raises significant concerns regarding the use of federal resources to repress the rights of Americans over the objections of many local elected officials who do not want federal help,” the letter said, adding that the agents “could be used to intimidate voters across the country in the upcoming election.”

The letter echoed concerns raised by other groups about DeJoy, who has no experience at the agency and is the former lead fundraiser for the Republican National Convention.

“We have an underfunded state and local election system and a deliberate slowdown in the Postal Service,” Wendy Fields, who heads the voting rights coalition the Democracy Initiative, told The New York Times, adding that Trump was “deliberately orchestrating suppression and using the post office as a tool to do it.”

Trump has repeatedly sought to sow doubts about mail voting, pushing debunked conspiracy theories alleging links to voter fraud and insisting, without evidence, that it would “lead to the end of our great Republican Party.” While lawmakers from both parties have rejected Trump’s false claims, even Republican officials are increasingly worried about how the changes at USPS will affect the expected mail-in voting surge.

“Election officials are very concerned, if the post office is reducing service, that we will be able to get ballots to people in time,” Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman, a Republican, told NPR.

David Partenheimer, a USPS spokesman, told The New York Times that post offices have “ample capacity to adjust our nationwide processing and delivery network to meet projected election and political mail volume, including any additional volume that may result as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

But the largest postal workers union argued that the changes would undoubtedly reduce service.

“The policies that the new postmaster general is putting into place — they couldn’t lead to anything but degradation of service,” Mark Diamondstein, the head of the American Postal Workers Union, told the outlet. “Anything that slows down the mail could have a negative impact on everything we do, including vote by mail.”

Democrats have been pushing to include a $25 billion cash infusion for the USUS in the next phase of coronavirus relief, which Republicans have rejected. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., argued that the Republicans want to “diminish the capacity of the Postal System to work in a timely fashion.”

“We are worried about new management at the Postal Service that is carrying out Trump’s avowed opposition to voting by mail,” Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., who heads a House subcomittee overseeing the USPS, told The Times. “I don’t think that’s speculation. I think we are witnessing that in front of our own eyes.”

Stacey Abrams, a potential running mate to presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden who faced her own battle with voter suppression when she ran for governor in Georgia, accused Trump of trying to “steal” the election by undermining the USPS.

“We will not be able to effectively count the votes of every eligible American because he’s doing his best to undermine our confidence in the process,” Abrams, who heads the voting rights group Fair Fight, told CNN, “but worst he’s doing his best to actually steal the vote by undermining the postal service.”

820 raw

'See you in Court!’ Trump threatens to sue Nevada’s Democratic governor over mail-in voting

trump fundraiser runs PO into ground, then problem cited as reason not to do mail vote:

https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/help-stephen-miller-fox-friends-uses-trumps-delay-election-tweet-lie

fox News continued Friday morning to provide cover for President Donald Trump’s tweet from Thursday, which suggested that America might “Delay the Election” rather than allow it to take place with expanded mail-in voting.

Previously, Fox News personalities ridiculed comments by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, who said in April that Trump might attempt to put off the election. At the time, Fox News commentators called such accusations a “bizarre conspiracy theory,” “so dumb,” “an attempt to frighten people,” “a conjuring,” and other terms of derision.

But on Friday’s edition of Fox & Friends, the co-hosts used Trump’s tweet suggesting Election Day should be postponed as a springboard to attack the concept of mail-in voting itself, and insisted that Trump was really just trying to highlight such concerns in the first place.In so doing, they not only helped to spread further lies about the voting process, but they also suggested it would be unreliable because of budget measures that have been put in place by the Trump administration itself.

“Well, a lot of Americans don't trust the U.S. postal system, because they’ve had budget cuts, they’ve had so many problems in the past, you know, decade or whatever, however long it’s been,” said co-host Ainsley Earhardt. “And everyone knows if you go in-person to vote, you know your vote is counted. But if you try to mail something in, there’s a big chance that it's not going to get to the folks who are counting these ballots.”

Not mentioned, of course, is that the Trump administration has opposed measures to shore up the Postal Service’s finances during the pandemic, and it has also put in place new measures to slow down mail delivery. It is these acts that have election officials worried about potential problems with mail-in voting — but which Fox News and other conservative media will use as a reason to oppose the expansion of voting, rather than work to counter those harmful obstacles that have been put in place.

[pix?]

co-host Brian Kilmeade also invoked a scenario he has pitched before, imagining family dynamics resulting in voter fraud or coercion and urging viewers to “just use logic” about it.

“You sit in your house, there’s five ballots for your family. Three of your kids, 18 to 21, ‘I'm not going to vote, you can vote for me, you could send it in. When I get around to doing it, you click the box,’” Kilmeade said. “Domineering parent tells the kids how they’re going to vote. Or some kids will grab their parents' ballot and send it. Can't we just have this one moment to vote for one candidate every four years, and show up and put a ballot in without licking an envelope or pressing on a stamp? If you can shop for food, if you can buy liquor, you can vote once every four years.”

Later on, the program hosted White House senior adviser Stephen Miller to help spread false claims about mail-in voting.

Co-host Pete Hegseth — who in Fox’s earlier coverage helped to lay the groundwork for a reinterpretation that Trump was really intended to bring attention to the alleged problems with mail-in voting — asked Miller a softball question: “He took to the podium to use that reaction, to explain about the many problems we’ve seen with absentee ballots not being counted on time, fraud with mail-in ballots. Explain what the White House is attempting to do to ensure election integrity on November 3?”

“Here’s a shocking thing for your audience to consider. Nobody who mails in a ballot has their identity confirmed — nobody checks to see if they’re even a U.S. citizen,” Miller responded. “Think about that. Any foreign national — talk about foreign election interference — can mail in a ballot, and nobody even verifies if they're a citizen of the United States of America. Now, this would be happening on a scale of potentially millions of people.”

As pointed out by Bloomberg’s Ryan Beckwith, this claim from Miller is false and media outlets should not be reporting on it without that disclaimer.

“What can be done at the White House to pressure states to actually do validated, in-person voting,” Hegseth asked, “as opposed to allowing secretaries of states to say, ’Hey, we’re going to mail this one in?’”

“Well, one of the things that we need to do, first of all, is raise awareness, so that citizens in every state can put pressure on their local leaders and their governors to fight universal balloting,” Miller proclaimed boldly. “That's a critical issue. Obviously, the Department of Justice has a responsibility to look at all issues relating to voter fraud in this country.”

“But you want to talk about voter suppression, you want to talk about denying people their franchise — that's what universal mail-in ballots are all about,” Miller claimed. “Universal mail-in ballots are an attempt to dilute the vote of your viewers. It's an attempt to dilute the vote of Americans who want to have their identities verified, by allowing for massive, endemic fraud. That is scandalous.”

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/heres-how-trump-will-try-to-rig-the-election/

bob cesca salon

By now, it’s relatively easy to forecast Donald Trump’s tyrannical moves. There are no advanced Frank Underwood-style chess gambits in play here. It’s barely Candyland, despite the fascistic goals involved. Trump is, on top of it all, a simple-minded, easily predictable Golgothan who telegraphs every move of self-preservation. Sometimes it can be reassuring to have a sense of where he’s going with his repetitious blurts. At other times it leaves us with this perpetual sense of instability, knowing what might be lurking around the corner. The November election fits horrifyingly into the latter category.

I believe I know how Trump will try to interfere with the process as well as the outcome, and it’s more than a little unnerving, especially given the cataclysmic stakes this time. Warning: This is a bit of a horror show, so hang on tight. Oh, and everything that follows presumes a close race, with the advantage leaning in Joe Biden’s direction.

We’re all brutally aware that every move Trump makes is aimed squarely at re-election. If he’s not re-elected, he could face criminal prosecution and dozens of lawsuits after he returns to being a private citizen. He knows better than anyone that the presidency is the only thing saving him either from the slammer or from an underground escape to a non-extradition country.

As part of his herky-jerky maneuvers to evade legal jeopardy, we also know he’s willing to sentence hundreds of thousands of Americans to death, and millions more on top of that to suffer from permanent pre-existing conditions, due to his near-genocidal indifference to the pandemic — indifference aimed at manipulating the stock market and thereby boosting in his re-election chances. It’s a matter of historical record that he was impeached by Congress and put on trial for trying to cheat in the election, while refusing to discourage Russia from cyber-attacking the process again.

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You get the point. He’s capable of doing anything in order to win, even risking his legal future. But none of the above tactics directly addresses how he might handle the actual process of suppressing and overturning votes.

Like a petulant boy who tosses a board game across the room when he’s losing, Trump is going to hurl the election process into absolute chaos. Here’s how: He’ll continue to suppress voting by discouraging absentee voting, while benefiting from new and existing roadblocks to in-person voting. Then, on and after Election Day, he’ll sue to try and stop absentee ballots from being counted.

You might’ve seen the unintentionally hilarious video of Trump on “Fox News Sunday” last weekend. During his sweaty, lie-filled exchange with Chris Wallace, the president once again repeated, “I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election.” He also said that he might not accept the outcome of the election. “I have to see,” Trump said when pressed on the question. Absentee voting, also known as “mail-in” voting, will be his primary target in his plan to derail the election. (Point of order: all mail-in ballots are absentee, including the president’s ballots. I will therefore use the term “absentee” from this point forward.)

Election Day won’t be a “day” at all. In fact, some estimates suggest we won’t know the winner of the presidential election, let alone contested Senate and House races, for a week or more after Nov. 3, mainly due to the record number of absentee ballots used during pandemic conditions. It’ll take days to electronically tabulate all those votes, and maybe weeks for hand-counted ballots in some precincts. I’m not even factoring in the possibility of recanvassing or actual recounts.

So far, there are 34 states, including the District of Columbia, allow some form of voting by mail without an excuse for one’s absence. (Oregon has conducted all elections by mail since 1998, with no significant problems. Colorado and Washington state have adopted universal vote-by-mail more recently.) By the way, the absentee voting states include Florida, where Trump will be voting by mail this year — again, with no excuse needed. The other 17 states require an excuse, but at least some of those will likely change the rules before November, eliminating the need for an excuse.

The main focus of Trump’s shrieking about absentee voting, of course, is to establish a hearts-and-minds framework to support legal challenges against those ballots. To that end, he’s routinely exploiting the bully pulpit to manufacture doubt about the reliability of absentee voting. From there, he’s capable of launching a series of lawsuits against boards of elections — perhaps in every state where absentee ballots are used, or just in states with margins too close to call or individual counties with narrow margins. As long as he continues to hammer his loyalists about the evils of absentee voting between now and Election Day, they’ll be increasingly likely to back him up during the actual process, organizing demonstrations and maybe a few “Brooks Brothers riots” not unlike Election 2000.

Any and all swing states will be ripe for legal challenges — not because of actual election or voter fraud but simply because Trump believes there’s fraud taking place. (Or, to be more accurate, because he claims to believe that.)

The other point is to discourage the use of absentee ballots, with the broader goal of convincing pro-Trump state officials to roll back existing absentee rules. After all, it’s much more difficult to monkey around with absentee votes that, by definition, include a paper trail. On the other hand, in-person votes cast on electronic voting machines are more susceptible to manipulation and hacking, whether by Russian agents or someone else, and we all know about Trump’s business partners in Moscow and their track record with American elections. In his desperation, Trump will be eager to meddle with every voting format, covering all his bases.

Challenge after challenge could rocket-propel the entire election back into the hands of the Supreme Court, home of the infamous Bush v. Goredecision, and there’s no guarantee that Chief Justice John Roberts will swing the way we hope he will. Irrespective of where Trump’s legal challenges land, he will absolutely use the courts as a delaying action, making for a hell of a long process at a time when the patience of the American people is practically nonexistent.

Electors are supposed to cast their ballots on Dec. 14, based on the results of the popular vote. If there’s an actual declared winner by that date, I’ll be shocked. Trump’s legal challenges will be thick and he’s shown zero compunction to give up. (See also his relentless legal challenges to protect his tax returns from prosecutors and congressional oversight.)

It’s also possible that Trump’s indefinite deployment of federal stormtroopers in selected cities will discourage some voters from turning out. Trump’s screeching has also suggested that he might order ICE and CBP goons to monitor polling places, which could discourage Latino citizens or other recent immigrants from voting.

One more thing: As the days following the election descend into chaos, it wouldn’t shock me if Trump simply declared victory before all the votes are counted. That won’t mean much in the grand scheme, but it will further incite his people and worsen the chaos.

I don’t know how all this will end, but I feel relatively secure in forecasting the mayhem. Honestly, as with everything Trump, I hope I’m wrong and this election wraps up without a glitch. But given King Joffrey the Flaccid’s actions lately, especially with his contra-constitutional deployment of unidentified soldiers to disappear protesters from the streets, it would be foolish to count on a smooth ride. The absolute best strategy for the Democratic Party, and indeed all Normals, is to prepare for a bloody mess before we have a winner. The party ought to be fully lawyered up in anticipation of Trump’s psycho-bombs detonating at polling places and in state capitals across the country. Don’t be blindsided.

I think we can all agree that Donald Trump will not go quietly, or accept defeat with any measure of dignity. Knowing the stunts he’s likely pull, and preparing accordingly, is half the battle.

self correction?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/two-big-news-outlets-express-regret-after-letting-trump-officials-lie/

although President Donald Trump often rails against the mainstream media and insists that countless journalists are out to get him, he and his officials will manipulate or deceive major news outlets whenever they can get away with it. This week, two such outlets have apologized for letting Trump officials get away with lying: USA Today and National Public Radio.

Earlier this week, USA Today published an op-ed by Peter Navarro — one of Trump’s top economic advisers — that claimed that Dr. Anthony Fauci has repeatedly been wrong about the coronavirus pandemic. But Bill Sternberg, USA Today’s editorial page editor, is now saying that some of Navarro’s anti-Fauci claims don’t hold up when fact-checked.

According to Sternberg, “Several of Navarro’s criticisms of Fauci — on the China travel restrictions, the risk from the coronavirus and falling mortality rates — were misleading or lacked context. As such, Navarro’s op-ed did not meet USA Today’s fact-checking standards.”

USA Today’s Ledyard King cites some specific examples of things Navarro wrote that were inaccurate. For example, Navarro wrote:

In late January, when I was making the case on behalf of the president to take down the flights from China, Fauci fought against the president’s courageous decision — which might well have saved hundreds of thousands of American lives.

King, however, explains: “Trump and his supporters have touted the restrictions on travel from China as a travel ban, but the move stopped short of that. As Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told reporters January 31, the country was denying entry to foreign nationals, ‘other than immediate family of U.S. citizens and permanent residents, who have traveled in China within the last 14 days.’ In addition, experts said there isn’t enough data to conclude the restrictions made a significant difference. A study in the journal Science found the various travel limitations across the globe helped slow the spread of the pandemic, but more was needed to contain it.”

Navarro also wrote:

When I was working feverishly on behalf of the president in February to help engineer the fastest industrial mobilization of the health care sector in our history, Fauci was still telling the public the China virus was low risk.

But according to King: “There’s no evidence of a large-scale effort by the Trump administration to mobilize supplies for the pandemic as early as February, although experts contend that a forceful response then would likely have limited the spread and saved lives. Trump said little in public about the virus during that time period and downplayed the threat.”

Meanwhile, on NPR’s website, Public Editor Kelly McBride criticized the outlet for letting Attorney General Bill Barr get away with lying during a “Morning Edition” segment that aired on June 26 and was hosted by reporter Steve Inskeep. That day, McBride writes, NPR listeners “heard U.S. Attorney General Barr falsely declare that mail-in ballots will jeopardize the security of the upcoming presidential election.”

Barr told NPR:

There’s so many occasions for fraud there that cannot be policed. I think it would be very bad. But one of the things I mentioned would be the possibility of counterfeiting.

According to McBride, the claim that mail-in voting promotes fraud is contradicted by “extensive reporting — including by NPR before Inskeep’s interview — fact-checking and academic research. The overwhelming consensus is that there’s no credible evidence that counterfeit mail-in ballots have posed any substantial threat to election security.”

“I felt it was such a ridiculous set of claims because he clearly didn’t know what he was talking about,” said Charles Stewart, a political science professor at MIT, in response to Barr’s claim that ballots could be stolen from mailboxes and counterfeited on a large scale and argued,

McBride writes: “I agree with the audience members who have cried foul at how this was presented. While some would argue that when a powerful government (official) offers an outrageous point, listeners should get to hear it, this interview made it too easy for those listeners to come away with an incomplete understanding — or even believing that Barr’s widely debunked statement is a credible concern.”

see trms: really successful mail in primary ballot, so gop legis eliminates?!

an 620

des Moines newspaper slams Iowa GOP’s ‘egregious’ voter suppression campaign in a scathing editorial

Alex Henderson

Iowa is among the swing states that could help determine whether President Donald Trump spends another four years in the White House or is voted out of office. It’s also…

Three top Texas GOP officials who oppose expanding mail-in voting have each used it

The Texas Tribune

Three of Texas’ top Republican leaders are vigorously fighting efforts to expand mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic, arguing it will lead to increased voter fraud, yet all three have…

an 520

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel repeatedly voted by mail — before suing California for expanding the practice Igor Derysh / Salon

authoritarian

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-goes-ballistic-over-twitters-fact-check-but-he-has-no-idea-what-hes-talking-about

That didn’t take long.

Around 5:30 PM Twitter slapped a label on two of President Donald Trump’s tweets, inviting social media users to “get the facts about mail-in ballot.” It’s the first time Twitter has placed what some are calling a “warning label” on any individual tweet.

And while others say it’s not sufficient – Trump lies remain and the label isn’t especially strong – Trump went ballistic just two hours later.

Despite the fact that Trump was engaging in voter suppression, he is accusing Twitter of “interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election."

'They are saying my statement on Mail-In Ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect, based on fact-checking by Fake News CNN and the Amazon Washington Post.”

Actually, his tweets are filled with lies and falsehoods, no fact-checking required.

But Trump did not stop there.

In yet another example of his belief that he is all powerful, Trump decreed, “Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!”

The President, who has never read the U.S. Constitution and little to no understanding of it, does not comprehend that he is using a private platform operated by a private company, and the only “free speech” guarantee is when the government “stifles” it.

Twitter can do what they want. And they have.

cody f

Twitter finally took a minor step to address the deluge of distortions, lies, and blatant disinformation flowing from President Donald Trump’s account.

Now, following a pair of Trump’s bogus tweets sent Tuesday morning spreading lies about mail-in voting, Twitter has inserted an alert telling readers to “Get the facts about mail-in ballots” as seen below:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/twitter-finally-takes-a-step-to-counter-trumps-online-disinformation

...[twet] Clicking the link brings readers to a page that addressed Trump’s falsehoods. It explained:

On Tuesday, President Trump made a series of claims about potential voter fraud after California Governor Gavin Newsom announced an effort to expand mail-in voting in California during the COVID-19 pandemic. These claims are unsubstantiated, according to CNN, Washington Post and others. Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud.

It continued:

Trump falsely claimed that mail-in ballots would lead to “a Rigged Election.” However, fact-checkers say there is no evidence that mail-in ballots are linked to voter fraud.

– Trump falsely claimed that California will send mail-in ballots to “anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there.” In fact, only registered voters will receive ballots.

– Though Trump targeted California, mail-in ballots are already used in some states, including Oregon, Utah and Nebraska.

While it’s important to rebut Trump’s attempt to manipulate the election and mislead the population about the integrity of American democracy, it’s easy to see how this solution from Twitter will raise further problems.

Conservatives will undoubtedly be outraged by the fact-check. Given how social media outlets have caved to faux and unjustified conservative outrage in the past, it’s easy to imagine that Twitter will respond poorly to these attacks.

It also creates the problem that the rest of Trump’s Twitter feed remains littered with disinformation and lies, including smears about President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden and a horrendous conspiracy theory insinuating baselessly that former Rep. Joe Scarborough murdered a congressional staffer. Correcting some lies and not others could create the appearance that Twitter is putting its seal of approval on misinformation.

Some, including Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), have advocated that Twitter ban Trump completely because of his abuse of the platform. Ultimately, someone like Trump leaves companies like Twitter in an incredibly difficult, perhaps impossible, situation. The best solution is to get reckless spreaders of disinformation out of power.

https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/right-wing-media-are-trying-scare-you-voting-person-during-pandemic

Right-wing media are furiously lying about efforts to promote mail-in voting during the pandemic.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/why-experts-are-worried-about-absentee-voting-across-the-country/

More than 30 statewide elections will be held in the 91 days from May 19 to August 18, previewing how unfamiliar or difficult absentee voting may be across America this fall.

The next big test is June 2, when eight states and the District of Columbia hold their presidential primaries. Despite President Trump’s claims that absentee voting cannot be trusted, red-run states (Indiana, Iowa, South Dakota) holding primaries that day have more experience with voting by mail and voters dropping off ballots at polling places than blue states and territories (Maryland, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and D.C.). Only one state in this group, purple Montana, has held an election where most people voted absentee.

States are turning to absentee voting in response to the pandemic. But as the next wave of statewide contests nears, experts are beginning to worry about the capacity of many states to handle surges of mail-based voting—now and in the fall. April’s primaries in Wisconsin and Ohio were mostly mail-based elections that were beset with problems due to partisan factors and rapidly changing plans. Meanwhile, many election officials preparing for June 2 primaries are scrambling.

“Administrators have struggled to accommodate both the requests for and issuance of absentee ballots in a timely manner during low turnout primaries,” Christopher Thomas, Michigan’s former election director, and Matthew Weil, director of the Elections Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), wrote in one of the few recent reports to assess voting in the pandemic. “During a high turnout general election, these [requests] are likely to overwhelm jurisdictions, causing huge delays in sending and subsequently counting absentee ballots."

in 2018, 52 million people, or 43.2 percent of voters nationally, cast ballots outside of Election Day in-person options, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission said. In 2016’s presidential election, the figure was 57.2 million, the EAC said.

“Regardless of what policy changes are made, we predict that vote-by-mail ballots will represent more than half of all ballots cast in [the fall of] 2020,” the BPC authors said, “which would be at least a 190 percent increase over 2016.”

Precedents for the Fall?

In the next three months, starting with Idaho on May 19 and continuing to Florida on August 18, more than 30 states will be holding presidential primaries or other statewide elections. While many states have updated some aspects of their absentee voting rules, what is becoming clear is that most of these states are not likely to offer voting options that meet the best practices touted by elections experts.

How easy or hard mail-based voting will be varies by state. A few states automatically send voters ballots. Most states require voters to apply for an absentee ballot. That step has variables, such as providing IDs, who pays for postage and deadlines. On the receiving end, officials have to vet applicants and then send ballots. Ballots have to be returned on time with correctly filled-out envelopes or dropped off at polling places. Just like voters are checked into precincts, these envelopes have to be vetted before ballots are counted. These steps are laborious, even with technology that automates some of the processes.

The dividing line between less-prepared and better-prepared states does not always follow the map of red and blue states. While there is a split among some GOP-run states that are making absentee voting easier (ignoring President Trump’s rants that mail-based voting cannot be trusted) and states where partisan legislators are forcing state election officials to impose procedures that have confounded voters, the real dividing line is battleground and non-battleground states.

The most recent example of that contrast can be seen in Ohio and Nebraska, which held their primaries on April 28 and May 12, respectively. The rule-heavy process in Ohio resulted in 20 percent voter turnout, a historic low. Two weeks later, nearly 14 percent of all ballots had yet to be officially accounted for (see “Ballots Cast” tab). Nebraska, in contrast, loosened its rules and sent absentee ballot applications to all registered voters. It set a turnout record that was 14 percent higher than its prior record set during 1972’s primary. (In 2018, 24 percent of Nebraskans had voted absentee, underscoring its experience with mail-based elections.)

Looking to the 10 primaries on June 2, the assessments are not overly encouraging.

The National Vote at Home Institute (NVAHI), the leading national organization promoting mail-based voting, on May 14 issued a report assessing every state and the District of Columbia’s ability to meet best practices. On a one-to-five scale based on 30 variables in running mail-based elections, six of the nine places holding June 2 primaries received a low grade of two (Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Washington, D.C.). Two states received a grade of three (New Mexico, Rhode Island) and one a grade of four (Montana).

The NVAHI report is a policy document. It strives for what it considers to be the ideal. As its experts said on a May 14 conference call, a successful vote-at-home election is glitch-free and boring. They cited Alaska’s trouble-free Democratic Party primary and Wisconsin’s problematic primary (for both parties), both held the same week in April, as counterpoints.

The contrast makes a broad point, but the two primaries were different in scale. Alaska’s party-run primary had 19,600 voters—all were sent mail-based ballots, while Wisconsin’s government-run primary had 1.55 million voters, who endured court fights, had to request absentee ballots or had to find an open polling place to vote.

Nonetheless, NVAHI has the difficult role of trying to advise state officials and lawmakers of what to do while encountering layers of resistance for adopting their preferred voting method: partisan opposition to expanded balloting, administrative challenges, budgetary constraints and little time to prepare for upcoming elections. Legislatures that haven’t looked at updating their voting rules or have not acted have left many election officials without clear rules or funds for voting this fall.

When asked for examples of progress, NVAHI’s responses revealed that elections evolve incrementally. For example, they said that Pennsylvania might adopt one of its suggestions, a tool that helps voters to track ballots in the mail like people track Amazon packages. Some Wisconsin counties were eyeing the same tool, NVAHI said. But that step, as helpful as it may be, was only one of the 12 “categories that we determined to be the foundation of a vote by mail system,” its assessment said.

Their other 11 foundational categories and concerns included: do voters need to give an excuse to obtain an absentee ballot—and does COVID-19 qualify? Does the state have good enough “data integrity” to mail all registered voters a ballot? Does it have online voter registration? Does it have online absentee ballot request forms, or must voters submit paper forms? Does the state pay for postage on ballot applications and ballot return envelopes? Does it have other return options, such as drop boxes? Do state deadlines allow for all of the processing—applying for, sending, receiving, vetting and counting ballots—to be completed? Does the state have a uniform signature verification process (before taking ballots out of envelopes)? Does it have processes to allow voters to fix mistakes? Does it count ballots postmarked on Election Day that arrive later? Does it mail ballots to voters?

In a report prepared for the Wisconsin Election Commission’s May 20 meeting, statewide administrators said that 120,989 ballots—9.3 percent of the 1.3 million ballots sent to voters for April’s primary—were not returned or counted. That figure was lower than the national non-return rate of mail-based ballots in 2018, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

Voting Isn’t Always Simple

Standing up absentee voting systems is more complex than debuting a new voting machine. NVAHI’s list also was not the full picture of what awaits voters. Other national groups, such as the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, have compiled charts with every state’s voter registration and absentee balloting laws, applications and filing deadlines. Some of these rules are the subject of more than two-dozen federal lawsuits by the Democratic Party, which seeks to reverse or suspend pre-COVID-19 requirements such as that an absentee ballot envelope must have a witness signature or be notarized.

Voting rights activists also look at the emerging absentee voting landscape differently than policy experts. Instead of seeing what needs to be done to have a functional process, advocates such as Progressive Democrats of America and Advancement Project, a civil rights law group, have been discussing what can go wrong for voters—and how to educate voters so that they can vote and their ballots count.

These discussions have identified voter information that is not readily available. For example, Voting Booth has yet to find a table of which states allow people to register to vote and to receive an absentee ballot at the same time. (In most states, one has to register first, wait until they are added to voter rolls, and then apply for an absentee ballot; all of which cannot be done at the last minute.)

Grassroots groups are also scrambling to compile state-by-state advice on what to tell voters to do if they have applied for an absentee ballot and it does not arrive. Must they go to a polling place and vote with a provisional ballot? Those ballots are the last to be counted and are rarely audited when assessing vote count accuracy.

In short, most stakeholders—voters, advocacy groups and election officials—are scrambling to stand up new systems and fill in the blanks. Against this backdrop, the Bipartisan Policy Center report subtly suggested that many states might not have the ability to accommodate a surge in absentee voting.

“States that choose to push more voters toward this option must address policy, implementation, and capacity issues on an extraordinarily short timeline,” Thomas and Weil wrote for BPC. “Regardless of what decisions are made, we strongly believe by November there will be high voter interest in the presidential election; voting by mail will likely represent well over half the ballots cast; and some amount of Election Day voting will continue but may be very different than normal.”

Steven Rosenfeld is the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has reported for National Public Radio, Marketplace, and Christian Science Monitor Radio, as well as a wide range of progressive publications including Salon, AlterNet, the American Prospect, and many others.

This article was produced by Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

chris wallace fox straight calls out trump BS

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/maga-extremists-worried-about-mail-in-voting-and-obamagate-as-michigan-is-battered-by-coronavirus-unemployment-and-severe-flooding/

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has had a lot to deal with this week, from the coronavirus pandemic and job losses to severe flooding in parts of her state. But where there are real problems, there are also far-right extremists and diehard MAGA voters obsessing over non-issues — and journalist Tim Alberta, in an article for Politico, examines some of the things they have been focusing on in that key battleground state.

On May 21, President Donald Trump visited Michigan — where he hasn’t been shy about offering political red meat for his MAGA base.

“Just 24 hours before he arrived in Michigan,” Alberta notes, “the president launched a dangerous disinformation campaign, accusing the secretary of state of going ‘rogue’ by illegally sending absentee ballots to every Michigan voter. He threatened to block funding to Michigan — a state beleaguered by multiple converging disasters, including one that was unfolding just as the tweet was sent: ‘if they want to go down this Voter Fraud path!’”

At a time when coronavirus and flooding are a double whammy in Michigan, Trump and his hardcore MAGA base are worried about mail-in ballots being a source of voter fraud in the state. But truth be told, voting by mail is something that Republicans have a long history of supporting. And as Alberta explains, Trump is promoting fear over a problem that doesn’t exist.

In Michigan, Alberta writes, “Voters were sent applications to vote absentee, a practice consistent with a newly adopted Michigan law — a law that exists in other states, red and blue alike. The Michigan GOP has itself sent out applications. There is nothing sordid or illegitimate going on; both parties here understand the rules of the game and are attempting to master them before November. But Trump is playing his own game.”

Politico interviewed an abundance of MAGA voters in Michigan on May 21, and found that they bought into Trump’s bogus voter fraud claims.

“In conversation after conversation with voters here Thursday,” Alberta reports, “Trump supporters repeatedly — and completely unsolicited — say Democrats are attempting to steal the election from the president.”

Michigan is also where far-right wingnuts have been holding raucous anti-shutdown rallies, declaring that Whitmer’s stay-at-home order is an anti-Trump conspiracy and that she is exaggerating the dangers of coronavirus. “Obamagate” is another non-issue MAGA voters are buying into.

But according to polls, most Michigan residents approve of the way Whitmer has handled the coronavirus crisis.

A statewide poll by the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, released May 20, found that 86% of Michigan voters believe that COVID-19 is a threat to public health — not a hoax. The poll also found that 69% of Michigan voters believe that the recent anti-shutdown protests in Lansing sent the wrong message and that only 11% of Michigan voters refuse to wear a mask in public when they go out.

The poll found 64% approval for Whitmer’s coronavirus response; that figure includes voters in general, but the number leaps to 96% approval among Democrats. Among independents, the number was 65%.

Recent polls have also found Trump trailing former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, in Michigan by 6% (Public Policy Polling), 3% (Change Research) or 8% (Redfield & Wilton Strategie

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-knows-most-americans-dont-want-to-re-elect-him-so-hes-cheating-like-crazy/

amanda

despite his off-the-charts narcissism, Donald Trump knows on some level that the majority of Americans don’t want him to be president and he cannot win in a fair election. He didn’t beat Hillary Clinton in the popular vote in 2016 — she got nearly 3 million more votes — and only won because of the outsize influence of smaller, rural states in the Electoral College. He has only grown less popular since then and is now well behind former Vice President Joe Biden in most national polls, usually by a margin of 5 to 8 points.

But Trump has had a plan to win in 2020, ever since his re-election campaign kicked off the second he was inaugurated: Cheat like crazy.

Trying to cheat in the presidential election is, of course, what Trump was impeached for in December, which no doubt feels like ancient history, due to the rising death tolls and exploding unemployment rate over which our “very stable genius” of a president has presided since then. So here’s a refresher: Trump, anticipating (apparently correctly) that Biden would be his Democratic opponent, leveraged the power of the State Department in an effort to blackmail the Ukrainian president into publicly backing right-wing conspiracy theories about Biden, threatening to withhold military aid unless Ukrainian officials announced “investigations” into Biden. The idea was to create the 2020 version of “Clinton’s emails” by using phony investigations and innuendo to paint Biden as corrupt, even though there’s no evidence Biden did anything corrupt in his dealings with Ukraine.

Impeachment did a lot to shut down that scheme (though I have no doubt they’ll keep trying), but that doesn’t mean Trump has given up the hope that he can rig some kind of victory, even in an election when strong majorities of Americans oppose him. Since shamelessness and callousness are among Trump’s central qualities, he’s perfectly happy to exploit the coronavirus crisis to do it. Yep, that same crisis that he made exponentially worse with his negligence and open hostility to science — now he wants to use it to deprive American voters of their chance to kick him out on his keister in November.

For obvious reasons, a numerous states have decided to dramatically increase the ability of voters to vote by mail in November, especially after the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court forced in-person voting in April, leading to a spike in coronavirus cases in the weeks afterwards. No one can assume that the virus won’t still be a threat this fall, and it’s better to prepare now for the possibility that people won’t be able to vote in person in November.

but Trump is certain — and for good reason — that if more people get to vote, he’s likely to lose. So he’s freaking out. He’s particularly sweating the possibility that voters in swing states will be able to vote by mail in large numbers, since he knows his best chance of winning those states lies in making sure that as few people vote as possible.

“Breaking: Michigan sends absentee ballots to 7.7 million people ahead of Primaries and the General Election,” Trump tweeted on Wednesday, in typical hyperventilating style. “This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this Voter Fraud path!”

He deleted and reposted the tweet later to reflect it was ballot applications that were sent, not ballots themselves, but kept the more disturbing false claim that it’s illegal to mail ballot applications to voters. He also threatened Nevada in similar fashion.

As Jack Holmes of Esquire pointed out, Trump is threatening two U.S. states in exactly the same way he threatened Ukraine: Claiming he will withhold funds authorized by Congress if the recipient doesn’t help him cheat in the 2020 election. This is election fraud and blackmail, but this time directed at Americans.

Not only are these tweets an effort to blackmail the states, but they are also a direct effort to scare ordinary citizens out of voting.

As political analyst Judd Legum pointed out in his newsletter, Popular Information, “Telling someone that an absentee ballot application they receive was sent to them ‘illegally’ could dissuade them from voting.”

Indeed, the tweets themselves are arguably voter intimidation, since Trump is literally trying to scare people into thinking they may be prosecuted if they fill out an application for a mail-in ballot.Voter intimidation is a federal criminal offense that could lead to jail time — except that Trump is hiding behind “executive privilege,” which has been used to argue against legal punishment for all his criminal behavior.

Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan literally warned the nation about this possibility during Trump’s impeachment hearings....[hypo is real]

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/republican-opposition-to-mail-in-ballots-is-a-departure-from-traditional-conservatism-and-could-backfire-gop-activist/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/whether-the-ballot-you-mail-is-counted-may-depend-on-where-you-vote/

....guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court seemed final: Election officials in Wisconsin should only count absentee ballots postmarked on or before the next day’s voting. Then, in the days after the chaotic primary, thousands of ballots poured in with missing or illegible postmarks — an issue the court had not directly addressed. Throwing up its hands, the Wisconsin Elections Commission left it to local officials to decide if ballots had been mailed on time.

The result was a troubling disparity. Janesville, longtime home of former Republican U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, received 65 ballots without postmarks after primary day, but before an April 13 deadline. “Consistent with the order from the U.S. Supreme Court,” Janesville officials rejected them all, according to City Clerk David Godek.

In the village of Cambridge, outside Madison, Barbara Goeckner counted all five such ballots. After talking with postal supervisors, the deputy clerk said, she took into consideration that the U.S. Postal Service had reported widespread delays and delivery problems.

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“You had 1,854 municipal clerks each determining whether to count or not count,” Goeckner said. “Personally, I believe every vote should count.”

Voting by mail has become a partisan flashpoint during the coronavirus outbreak, with Democrats pushing to expand it and President Donald Trump claiming, without evidence, that mail-in voting is “corrupt.” But, as Wisconsin illustrates, the impact of vote by mail depends in part on how it is implemented.

Policies regarding postmark requirements, verifications of signatures and other ballot rules vary from one state or county to the next. In some states, a mailed ballot that would be accepted in one county or town may be discarded in another, potentially disenfranchising individuals or groups and undermining the constitutional principle of equal voting rights. If the pandemic persists, and November’s presidential election is conducted largely by mail, such inconsistencies could tip the outcome in swing states like Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission “tried to give clear guidance,” spokesperson Reid Magney said. “The decisions came down to individual boards of canvassers in 1,850 municipal offices looking at these things and making determinations.”

Magney said the state did not track how many ballots missing postmarks were accepted or rejected. “We know people are hungry for this data,” Magney said.

Five states — Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah — currently run all-mail elections. Since the coronavirus outbreak, several states, including Virginia and Alabama, have expanded the ranks of voters who can request absentee ballots. But policymakers in at least half a dozen states — Arizona, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, Georgia and Texas — are clashing about how and whether to broaden vote by mail. Their disputes cast doubt about whether states can make a smooth and equitable shift from in-person to mail-in ballots by November.

“I don’t see vote by mail as a panacea,” said Charles Stewart, a professor of political science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The most successful cases have been states that have been deliberate and have organically grown into it.”

Once seen as an uncontroversial option for voters who couldn’t make it to the polls, vote by mail has become increasingly politicized in the battle over the size and shape of turnout. After Georgia’s secretary of state said he would mail forms to all voters to request absentee ballots for its presidential primary in March, the speaker of the state’s House of Representatives, also a Republican, criticized the move as “extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives. … This will certainly drive up turnout.” (He later walked back his statement, saying he was concerned that voting by mail would lead to fraud.) Georgia has delayed its primary until June 9.

In New Mexico, the state Supreme Court this month blocked a plan by state and county election officials to send all voters a mail-in ballot for the June primary. Texas Democrats sued state and county election officials, including the Republican governor, this month in federal court to expand vote by mail. “Texas has an extensive history of disenfranchising voters and in this moment of national crisis, it appears poised to do so again,” the lawsuit alleges.

The Wisconsin debacle reminded some experts of hanging chads and the contested 2000 presidential election in Florida. “This was the Bush v. Gore problem, where lots of peoples’ ballots were not counted as intended,” said Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. “Ideally we would have a lot more uniformity in which votes count to maximize the counting of valid ballots.”

When ballots are rejected, the ostensible reason is usually logistical. The ballots arrive too late. There’s confusion over postmarks. A signature is missing, or it doesn’t match signatures on file in an election office.

Yet vote by mail rejection rates vary widely among states. (It’s tricky even to compare the data, since states have different rules and rely to different extents on vote by mail.) Washington, which runs an all-mail voting system and is considered a leader in the practice, rejected 0.9% of mail ballots in 2016, the highest rate in the nation, according to the MIT’s Election Performance Index. Wisconsin, for its part, rejected the lowest percentage of mail ballots in 2016 – 0.0095%.

New research suggests certain groups may be disproportionately hurt by ballot rejections. In Florida’s 2018 election, younger voters, those with disabilities and minority voters were far more likely to have their vote by mail ballots discarded, according to research published last week by political scientists at Dartmouth College and the University of Florida.

It’s not clear exactly how this effect takes place. Mailed-in ballots don’t indicate a voter’s age or race. Yet, across every county in Florida, younger voters were significantly more likely to have their ballots rejected, according to the researchers. The researchers examined the 2.6 million vote by mail ballots cast in Florida in 2018, of which 1.2% were rejected. Of 18- to 21-year-olds in the state, 5.4% had their mail ballots rejected, more than eight times the rate of those over 65. Voters aged 18 to 29 comprised 2.1% of all mailed-in ballots, but 9.2% of all rejected mail ballots.

The paper’s authors contend that young voters’ ballots may be more likely to be tossed because their signatures tend to change more than those of older voters. Also, some voters’ names may be more complicated and harder to check. But neither of these factors fully explains the discrepancies.

There was great variability in rejection rates not just between groups but also between counties, even those with similar demographics, reflecting the significant leeway of local officials to decide whose vote gets counted. Dan Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida and one of the paper’s authors, said that the differences could be driven by intentional or unintentional bias. “What is really persistent and pernicious about this finding is how disenfranchised young voters are when casting ballots by mail,” he said.

If you vote by mail, you must attest that it is your ballot by signing an affidavit on the envelope. The election office then compares that signature to one of yours already on file. Ten states, including Wisconsin, Virginia and North Carolina, also generally require witness or notary signatures, which are harder to obtain in a lockdown.

The best systems, voting experts say, have software to identify potential mismatches and a bipartisan group of signature reviewers for each flagged ballot. But policies for addressing signature problems — and the time given to voters to resolve them — differ from one state or county to the next, prompting a wave of lawsuits across the country.

Voting rights advocates say that many local election administrators aren’t properly trained to suss out problems with signatures. “Coming into the 2020 cycle, we were already pretty concerned about vote by mail in general,” said Jonathan Diaz, counsel for voting rights at the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit. “In many states these assessments are being made by poll workers who may have had some kind of signature training, but likely not.”

In 2016, in response to a lawsuit brought by Democrats, a federal judge criticized Florida’s procedures, calling the state’s system “a crazy quilt of conflicting and diverging procedures” for comparing signatures. “The state of Florida has categorically disenfranchised thousands of voters arguably for no reason other than they have poor handwriting or their handwriting has changed over time,” the judge concluded. In response, Florida passed a bill intended to standardize the process by which voters can contest ballot signature problems.

An April review of California’s signature verification procedures by Stanford’s University’s Law and Policy Lab found “limited statewide uniform criteria or standards for signature verification, and what ‘counts’ as a matching signature varies enormously from county to county.”

In Arizona, where some 80% of votes are cast by mail, a partisan fight over signature-matching issues helped delay results in a closely watched 2018 U.S. Senate race between Republican Martha McSally and Democrat Krysten Sinema. In the weeks leading up to the election, Adrian Fontes, the Democratic recorder in the traditional Republican stronghold of Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, instituted a policy allowing some voters up to five days after election day to correct problems with their ballot signatures. Pima County, where Tucson is located, had a similar policy, but other Arizona counties gave voters less time.

The state’s Republican party saw Fontes’ new policy as evidence that Democrats were “stealing” the election and sued. As the count dragged on, Trump tweeted: “Just out — in Arizona, SIGNATURES DON’T MATCH. Electoral corruption – Call for a new Election? We must protect our Democracy!”

But the lawsuit was quickly settled, and the state adopted a version of Maricopa County’s policy before the count was finished, later making it permanent. Six days after the election, Sinema was declared the winner. No evidence of fraud emerged.

Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state, said that she’s satisfied with the way the state now handles signature-matching problems on ballots, giving voters ample opportunity to correct mistakes. “What we have in place now is just more consistency,” she said.

This year, Fontes sparked controversy again. Just four days before Arizona’s March 17 presidential primary, he revealed plans to send ballots to residents who hadn’t signed up for them. Voters could drop off the ballots at various locations instead of returning them by mail or going to polling places and engaging with other voters or poll workers.

“There will be some who will say there is no authority to mail ballots to all voters under the law, but there is no prohibition either,” Fontes said in his announcement.

The state’s Republican attorney general quickly filed suit, prompting a judge to halt the mailings. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, a Republican state senator who has pushed several bills to change Arizona’s vote by mail rules, told ProPublica that Fontes’ initiative was illegal and unnecessary even in a pandemic. “It had nothing to do with promoting election practices,” Ugenti-Rita said. “It had everything to do with a political agenda. There’s no way he didn’t realize that it was outside of this authority.”

Hobbs, the secretary of state, agreed with Republicans that Fontes’ initiative was illegal. But she has since reached out to the state’s election officials to gauge the feasibility of sending mail-in ballots to any voters who might want them.

Arizona Republicans, who control the Legislature, have said that expanding vote by mail threatens the integrity of the state’s elections and could lead to fraud. A bipartisan group of election officials in Arizona’s 15 counties disagrees, and it has publicly called for an all-mail election.

“I am not optimistic that the Legislature is going to do the right thing here,” Hobbs said.

With his original plan quashed, Fontes now hopes the state will expand vote by mail to all Arizonans, as Hobbs and the election officials favor. But he’s concerned about getting ready in time for the general election. “Literally, I have to order envelopes, I have to get paper for ballots,” he said. “There are logistical challenges that most policymakers never consider when they’re running around playing their political games. I don’t have the luxury of ideological rhetoric when I actually have to do a job.”

Time is running out for states to switch to vote by mail, Fontes said. “If they’re not already well into making the shift now, it may already be too late.”

Barbara Goeckner, the deputy clerk in Cambridge, Wisconsin, is immunocompromised. She donated a kidney to her sister years ago and had her spleen removed.

Yet, although she was at higher risk of developing COVID-19, she worked 70-hour weeks in her office before and after the primary. Behind a plexiglass window, she processed absentee ballot applications and answered voters’ questions, as her office struggled to keep up with the demand for absentee ballots. Ultimately, 593 absentee ballots were requested in Cambridge, up from just 72 in the 2016 presidential primary, a 723% increase.

Overall, Wisconsin towns sent out 1.28 million absentee ballots for the primary, a more than fivefold increase from the 2016 presidential primary. In some towns, online systems crashed from the volume of requests for absentee ballots. Some voters received empty envelopes, or their ballots didn’t arrive until after primary day, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Rachel Rodriguez, an elections management specialist for Dane County, which includes part of Cambridge, said disagreements between the state’s Democratic governor and the Republican-controlled Legislature left election officials with little time to adjust. At times, Rodriguez had no idea what to tell voters, and she said she believes fewer Wisconsinites will see their votes count as a result.

“It is unfortunate that some of the political players that had the power to make some of these decisions were not able to come to some sort of common sense solution over how this election should be conducted,” she said.

Rodriguez dispatched National Guard members throughout the county, including two to Goeckner’s office in Cambridge. One drove to an elderly woman’s house and acted as a witness for her absentee ballot signature. On primary day, another Guard member tried to call every town resident who hadn’t returned a ballot to warn them about changes to deadlines for ballots to be postmarked. “It was extremely stressful. There were many days where I felt that I couldn’t keep doing this,” Goeckner said. “But we are required by oath to do this job, no matter what.”

Another village in Dane County, McFarland, took the opposite approach from Cambridge toward ballots that arrived after election day without postmarks. After consulting with the town’s canvas board, McFarland officials decided to reject 22 ballots that did not contain a postmark or were not postmarked by Election Day, said Cassandra Suettinger, McFarland’s clerk and treasurer. Although they took the same action as Janesville, they offered a different rationale.

“This may not have been the case in all municipalities,” Suttinger wrote, “but the Village of McFarland felt based on the guidance from Attorneys, and the confirmation from the post office, the decision to count ballots with a post mark was the correct decision.”

Molly Collins, advocacy director for the Wisconsin ACLU, said voters were confused by conflicting guidance about postmarks and witness signatures. Before the primary, Collins advised voters to bring ballots to their local post offices and have them postmarked to make sure their votes counted.

“It was very concerning,” she said. “There’s no question in my mind that who your clerk was mattered a lot in this election.”

Filed under:

Politics

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trumps-enablers-are-inflating-his-lies-about-vote-by-mail/

no lnx

Trump’s enablers are inflating his lies about vote-by-mail

President Donald J. Trump waves after talking with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House Monday, Nov. 4, 2019, and walks to board Marine One to begin his trip to Kentucky. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington MonthlyApril 24, 2020

Joe Biden is sounding the alarm.

“Mark my words, I think [Trump] is gonna try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held,” Biden said during a Q&A at a virtual fundraising event.

He noted Trump’s refusal to fund the U.S. Postal Service, which is struggling under the weight of the COVID-19 pandemic, as lawmakers across the country push for mail-in voting to keep the virus from spreading.

“Now what in God’s name is that about, other than trying to let the word out that he’s going to do all he can to make it very hard for people to vote?” Biden asked. “That’s the only way he thinks he can possibly win.”

After the debacle in Wisconsin, many states are pursing an expansion of mail-in voting. But Trump has led the charge against that option by spouting a whole series of lies. Jane Timm went through them one by one and fact-checked them all as false. Here’s the bottom line.

Richard Hasen, an election law expert and a professor at the University of California, Irvine, pointed to an exhaustive News21 review of voter fraud between 2000 and 2012, which found just 491 incidents of alleged absentee voter fraud among more than a decade of elections and 146 million registered voters.

“No means of voting is perfect, but the benefits of vote-by-mail — particularly during a pandemic — greatly exceed the risks of fraud associated with it,” he told NBC News.

But that isn’t likely to stop the president’s enablers. For example, Mark Hemingway has written a piece with this explosive title: “28 Million Mail-In Ballots Went Missing in Last Four Elections.”

Between 2012 and 2018, 28.3 million mail-in ballots remain unaccounted for, according to data from the federal Election Assistance Commission. The missing ballots amount to nearly one in five of all absentee ballots and ballots mailed to voters residing in states that do elections exclusively by mail.

In order to heighten the angst, Hemingway goes on to point out that “in 2016 Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by garnering over 2.8 million more votes than Donald Trump. But nearly 6 million unaccounted mail-in ballots were never counted in 2016.”

To his credit, Hemingway does note in the third paragraph that “there is no evidence that the millions of missing ballots were used fraudulently.” Nevertheless, he says that “the sheer volume of them raises serious doubts about election security.”

So what is Hemingway talking about when he refers to these 28 million missing mail-in ballots? The first thing to note is that he got his information from a report published by the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a group that claims that voter fraud is rampant in the U.S. and that large numbers of ineligible aliens are casting ballots. The president of PILF—J. Christian Adams—was appointed to serve on Trump’s voter fraud commission and one of their board members is Hans von Spakovsky, who has been advocating for voter suppression since he fought against motor-voter provisions in 1997.

The report on these so-called “missing ballots” makes it difficult to follow their numbers, but they suggest that over 40 million mail-in ballots are sent out every election. In looking at four elections (2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018), that would total over 160 million ballots, of which 28 million (or roughly 17.5 percent) went missing. They note that some never reached the intended targets (perhaps because of outdated addresses), some were never returned (ie, people chose not to vote), and some were rejected—usually due to signature errors.

It is interesting that PILF included “rejected” ballots among those they suggested are “missing.” Checking signature against voter registrations is one of the security measures utilized with vote-by-mail. While maintaining accurate addresses will always be a challenge for mailed ballots, the fact that some people chose not to take the opportunity to vote is hardly a problem, especially given that voter turnout has hovered around 50-60 percent in recent presidential elections (lower in midterms). So overall, if 82.5 percent of mailed ballots are returned as valid, that demonstrates pretty astounding success.

Of course, the whole point of reports like this is to scare people with numbers like 28 million “missing” ballots without any context whatsoever. Given what we’ve seen from Trump, it probably won’t be long before he adds to these lies and starts talking about 28 million people casting fraudulent mail-in ballots as a reason to either force people to vote in person during a pandemic, or, as Biden has warned, as an excuse to delay the election.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/investigative-reporter-breaks-down-the-real-reason-republicans-threw-a-fit-in-wisconsin-trumps-gop-is-canceling-the-american-peoples-right-to-vote/

no lnx

Investigative reporter breaks down the real reason Republicans ‘threw a fit in Wisconsin’: Trump’s GOP is ‘canceling the American people’s right to vote’

President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence walk with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senator Roy Blunt, R-Mo., Tuesday, March 10, 2020, upon their arrival to the U.S. Capitol for a Senate Republican policy lunch. (Official White House Photo by D. Myles Cullen)

Written by Chauncey DeVega / Salon April 12, 2020

Encouraged by the pain, suffering, misery and distraction caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump is continuing his assault on American democracy and the rule of law.

His most recent move: removing at least seven inspectors general who provide independent oversight within various departments of the United States government.

Trump is a malignant narcissist with authoritarian tendencies and may well be a sociopath. Like a Mafia boss, he views personal loyalty as more important than loyalty to the Constitution and the rule of law. Aided by Attorney General William Barr, Trump appears poised to loot the coronavirus relief funds passed by Congress, harass and silence his political enemies, speed up the country’s downward slide into failed democracy, and unleash more cruelty against those Americans he deems to be insufficiently loyal or otherwise “undesirable.”

On Twitter, Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics, summarized recent developments:

A last line of defense in this war on ethics and law is the Inspector General community. They’re the eyes of the American people, objective investigators traditionally freed to pursue accountability by the safeguard of bipartisan congressional protection.

What began with the fall of the ethics program is entering the end game with the potential fall of the Inspector General community. The government is failing us, safeguards that took two centuries to build have crumbled, and fascism is eyeing this republic like lunch.

Shaub is perhaps being optimistic: Donald Trump and his allies, both foreign and domestic, are already gorging on democracy. Trump makes no effort to hide his contempt for American democracy. He is obvious and unapologetic.

Last week, Trump admitted that “You’d never have a Republican elected in this country again” if Americans were universally permitted to vote by mail.

Trump is just channeling a belief that has long been expressed both in private and in public by Republicans and other members of the right-wing movement. On this, Trump and the Republicans are correct: According to public opinion polls and other research, the American people overwhelmingly reject their policies and goals.

Because democracy is antithetical to today’s Republican Party, Donald Trump has repeatedly condemned voting by mail because he believes it will be disadvantageous to his chances of winning another presidential term in 2020. In the final analysis, Republicans want to make voting more difficult even if it means more Americans will fall ill and die from COVID-19.

Last Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court endorsed Trump and the Republicans’ ongoing assault on American democracy. In a 5-4 decision, the court’s “conservative” majority ordered that Wisconsin’s primary election could not be delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic, and no extension would be allowed for mail-in ballots. This decision forced the people of Wisconsin — most notably nonwhite people, students, young people, and other Democratic Party’s base in cities like Milwaukee and Madison — to choose between their lives and their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote.

The Democratic Party’s leaders have apparently decided that expanded mail-in voting is a necessary measure, and the best way to defeat Donald Trump in the context of the coronavirus pandemic.

In reality, matters are not so simple.

Greg Palast is an investigative journalist whose work has been featured by the BBC, the Guardian, the Nation, Rolling Stone, as well as on Salon.

He is the author of the bestselling books “Billionaires & Ballot Bandits” and “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.” Palast is one of the country’s foremost experts on voter fraud and how elections are rigged to suppress and otherwise interfere with the will of the people in a democracy.

He warns that mail-in voting as it currently exists is likely to guarantee Donald Trump’s victory in the 2020 election. Palast also explains how the Supreme Court decision on the Wisconsin primary election was really about purging nonwhite voters in order to maximize Trump’s chances of winning that key battleground state.

Palast says, however, that the Democratic Party’s new mail-in voting proposals can be improved so that the will of the American people can be fully realized at the ballot box — which will likely ensure Trump’s defeat in November.

You can also listen to my conversation with Greg Palast on my podcast “The Truth Report” or through the player embedded below.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

What is democracy? What does it mean to you?

To me, it’s very simple: Every citizen gets to vote, and every vote gets counted. If you don’t have those two things, you don’t have a democracy.

Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he opposes mail-in ballots and if mail-in ballots are allowed that no Republican will ever get elected in the United States again. What were your thoughts when you heard the president of the United States making such bold and obvious threats against the country’s democracy?

Of course, it shows Donald Trump’s totalitarian mindset. My second thought is that the Democrats are making a mistake by thinking, “Well, if Trump says mail-in ballots are a bad idea, then let’s make sure all Americans mail in their ballots.”

Just the logic of it. Donald Trump says, “I hate mail-in ballots,” and the Democrats are saying we must have expanded mail-in ballots because of the coronavirus. But how do we work through the puzzle that the Republican Party actually does much better with mail-in voting? Shouldn’t Trump be encouraging that way of voting, because Republicans have great experience in suppressing votes and other ways of rigging elections?

Republicans know that they can just throw out the mail-in ballots.

Remember, when a person fills out a mail-in ballot it is not the simple task of just picking a candidate, sealing the envelope and then mailing it. You must have the right envelope. You have to answer questions on the outside of the envelope. You have to have the correct postage. You have to have all this information. In many states there has to be a witness or a notary, which is not easy to do. The mail-in ballots in many states are not postage-paid. This is a big problem because, for example, Ohio has a little square where it says, “Put your stamp here.” Well, that envelope requires two stamps. But if you were to look at the envelope, most people would assume it is just one stamp.

There is no question that Republicans do much better with mail-in voting than the Democrats. Republicans are better with mail-in voting because more of them do it. So there is a practical advantage with experience. Ultimately, there should not have been in-person voting and elections held in Wisconsin on Tuesday. To do such a thing is insane. There have to be other and better ways to vote, especially given the coronavirus. These solutions include early in-person voting and improved mail-in voting.

For example, in Hollywood there is drive-up voting where a person does not have to leave their car. There should also be drop-off boxes and other ways to get a ballot other than waiting for a card that a person may never even see or get. The Republicans are using this trope where mail-in voting is a bad thing — if it benefits Democrats. Do not forget that Republicans actually use mail-in voting more and they are defeating the Democrats using it.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the coronavirus pandemic does not constitute an emergency sufficient enough to delay voting in Wisconsin and that people should not be given more time to mail in their ballots. To a reasonable observer the court’s decision makes no sense and is obviously endangering the lives of voters. What was the real motivation here?

The basic logic is there are five Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court who can tell the other justices “Screw you! Case closed!”

Here is their real argument: “We’re Republicans. This is what we want. Period.”

Consider what happened several weeks ago. Mike DeWine, the Republican governor of Ohio, did not want the vote to take place. The Democrats sued to force him to hold the primary. Being the governor, he said, “Screw you. I’m not holding the election.” He shut it down.

When the Republicans decide to delay or not have an election it is fine with the U.S. Supreme Court. The Democrats could not even get a hearing with the court about what DeWine did in Ohio. But when the Republicans wants to stop a delay in Wisconsin, the Supreme Court intervened.

The big picture: Why is this all happening? What is this fight really about? The Republicans do not care about Bernie Sanders versus Joe Biden. That is a settled issue, it’s over. The Republicans threw a fit in Wisconsin because the real issue is the Wisconsin State Supreme Court.

The Republican legislature voted that the state must remove 232,000 voters, who they claim have moved. That is not true, of course. Those voters have not moved. Most of the people on that list have never moved anywhere. They have not moved out of their county. The governor and lieutenant governor are Democrats and they are not going to purge those voters. The Republicans then went to court to force the Democrats to make those voters ineligible. Tuesday was also the general election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. That was the real issue.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is controlled by the Republicans, and the Democrats were trying to take it away from them. With the decision about the coronavirus and mail-in ballots, the Republican Party’s control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court is not locked in. The Republicans will be able to remove a quarter million people from the voting rolls — voters who are more likely to support the Democrats.

Donald Trump supposedly won Wisconsin by 22,000 votes in 2016. Now 10 times that number will be purged by Republicans. That will give Donald Trump the state of Wisconsin in 2020. That is what the controversy and the U.S. Supreme Court decision is really about.

This is all part of a much larger strategy where Republicans rig elections. In urban and predominantly black and brown areas of Wisconsin there were almost no voting machines. People were waiting in long lines and risking their lives because of the coronavirus pandemic.

In rural areas of Wisconsin, where the virus has not yet hit in a real way, there is in-person voting. Republicans are more likely to mail in their ballots than Democrats and so they’ve already voted. Rural areas are also not as crowded at the polls. That makes it safer. Poll workers are older and they’re high-risk. They are also not reckless. There was a problem getting a sufficient number of polling officials and workers for Milwaukee. As such, the number of polling stations was reduced from 180 to three.

Because many people do not have cars, even getting to the polls in more populated urban areas during the coronavirus is dangerous. And there is the risk of going on mass transit as well. Tuesday’s election was a total fix by the Republicans. It was a joke of an election. The Republicans loved it. They do not want to expand mail-in voting.

On mail-in voting, make note of how Trump complained about the Democrats’ proposals. He was not complaining about mail-in voting in general. He was specifically condemning the Democrats’ proposals for mail-in voting. Trump knows that if instituted, the Democrats’ mail-in voting plan will wipe out the Republicans.

The Democrats want to make mail-in voting really work, and they want to extend early voting to a three-week period. That would also include evening voting. If the public is allowed to vote at different times, it will make it easier to keep a safe distance during the coronavirus epidemic. Voting will be much safer. What the Democrats want to implement about mail-in voting and other such changes is excellent.

But if there is mail-in voting as it is currently implemented in most states, Donald Trump cannot lose. The mail-in voting system as it exists will almost guarantee Trump and the Republican Party’s victory. Mail-in voting is a disaster for Democrats and it has always been a total disaster.

But Trump does have one thing right: If every eligible American votes then the Republicans are screwed.

If the Democrats know that they are heading for a mail-in election in 2020 because of the coronavirus, however, then they can improve the process and also have time to educate the public about this new and better system.

There is this hopelessly naïve and in many ways pathetic narrative being circulated by too many journalists and other political observers that any talk about Donald Trump canceling the 2020 presidential election is somehow ridiculous, that such a thing cannot happen in the United States. But many such people have zero credibility given that they also said that Donald Trump could not possibly be elected president. How do you evaluate these concerns?

What we are heading for in America is not Donald Trump canceling the 2020 presidential election but just canceling the American people’s right to vote.

Donald Trump can just hold a pretend election. America has a great deal of experience with doing such a thing. There is a massive system in place to purge voters. Many Americans will never receive their mail-in ballots. Ballots will never get counted. They also get disqualified for ridiculous reasons.

Every time there is an impediment to voting and registration in America it targets young people, black people and brown people. Low-income people are targeted. This is another version of Jim Crow racially segregated voter suppression and vote theft. Trump and the Republicans have many ways of holding an election and pretending that he was legitimately elected when, of course, he was not.

What are some specific tactics and strategies the Republican Party and Donald Trump’s agents can use to amplify their interference in the American people’s right to vote — and have their vote properly counted — in the 2020 election?

A study from MIT puts the loss of mail-in ballots at 22 percent. That is 25 million ballots if the United States goes to an 80 percent mail-in voting system.

The Republicans would not need to bring in new people or ramp up their voter suppression oppression. With the Electoral College, it is easy to steal an election. Stealing an election is much easier because in that system all one has to do is target the “battleground states” such as Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Places that we don’t think of as “swing states” — North Carolina and Georgia, for example — are gradually becoming “minority majority.” The Republicans know they are in trouble in Georgia. How do they keep control of the South? They manipulate the vote by purges, gerrymandering, tricks with mail-in voting and other techniques. The Republicans have many ways of keeping people from having their vote counted. Again, if the Democrats fix the system, they can lessen the impact of Republican Party interference and thus make sure that votes in support of the Democratic Party are fully counted.

What is the role of the coronavirus pandemic in the 2020 presidential election?

The coronavirus is voting for Donald Trump. If in-person, in-precinct voting is required and the coronavirus is present in that community, then people are going to be afraid.

There may be lingering fear of the coronavirus even if it is “officially” gone because no one trusts Donald Trump and his administration. That fear of the coronavirus is going to massively hurt the urban vote for the Democrats. If that happens, Trump wins again in 2020. If the United States continues with the mail-in system it currently has, then Donald Trump wins again in 2020. The coronavirus votes for Donald Trump. It is really that simple. The vote won’t even be close.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/if-the-postal-service-dies-so-does-democracy/

no lnx

If the postal service dies, so does democracy

Written by Roxanne Cooper / The Washington Monthly April 11, 2020

There are two big stories this week about a subject that normally sounds painfully boring: the mail. Each is crucially important in its own right, but combined they presage a nearly apocalyptic threat to American democracy.

The first is that the Donald Trump and Republican Party are engaged in an all-out war against the expansion of mail-in voting in the era of COVID-19.The flimsy outward justification is concern about voter fraud, but of course there is no evidence of significant voter fraud surrounding mail ballots. In fact, the only major scandal in the modern era around mail-in voting was a corrupt scheme by Republicans in North Carolina–one that was quickly and easily discovered. Republicans aren’t exactly being shy about why they want to restrict the expansion of access to mail voting: they think the more people are allowed to vote, the better Democrats will do against them. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Republicans are far less concerned about the virus than are Democrats, and that in battleground states with Republican legislatures like Wisconsin, there are far more polling places per capita in red districts than blue ones, which means not only longer lines but more dangerous crowding at the polling places. It only adds to the Republican turnout advantage if most people have to vote in person.

The opposition to mail voting is amusing given that it has traditionally been advantageous to Republicans, and even now doesn’t much benefit one party or the other. But facing electoral calamity after four years of Trump plus a disastrous epidemic response and looming recession, Republicans clearly feel their best shot at keeping power is if as few people are allowed to safely vote as possible. It’s a fundamentally immoral stance at odds with the principles of democracy itself, but unashamedly taking baldly self-serving positions contrary to previously shared values of basic decency is a hallmark of Republicanism under Donald Trump. It’s not a bug; it’s a feature.

The second story involves the Post Office itself. The United States Postal Service is set to run out of money by September. The previous round of emergency coronavirus stimulus did not take the long-beleaguered Postal Service into account. Conservative policymakers have been eyeing the USPS with hungry privatizing chops for a long time, and have been hamstringing it with ridiculous provisions like forcing the USPS to take into account 50 years of pension payments in advance in its budget, which no other corporation or public agency has to do.

Donald Trump loves to talk about what a “great American company” FedEx is, and conservatives would love to eliminate the postal service and give all of its operations to private shipping companies and private equity. Of course, long gone would be the days of sending a letter from coast to coast in a few days for a fraction of a dollar–but since when was that sort of thing a concern for Republicans?As with libraries, if the Postal Service didn’t already exist and you proposed it, it would be considered a ridiculous and wasteful socialist fantasy. In the modern era Republicans would make sure it never came into being, and mainstream Democrats would means-test it so that everyone would have to fill out tax statements in triplicate to make sure that no one making over a certain amount got a free mailbox.

Are these two stories merely a coincidence? Perhaps. It is possible that just as Republicans are attempting to thwart vote-by-mail in order to reduce voter turnout in a pandemic, they also just so happen to be defunding the Postal Service.

But what if it’s not? What if the plan is explicitly to cripple the mail system itself as yet another argument against mail-in voting, providing them an excuse to force people to vote in person in a pandemic or not vote at all? It would be a villainous plot straight out of a James Bond film. That doesn’t mean it’s not real, especially given the current administration. Even if it’s not intentional, the combined effect of both acts of bad faith would certainly be convenient for deeply unpopular conservatives whose only chance of holding onto ill-gotten power is to thwart democracy itself.

Democrats would do well to act as if they were facing opponents with the depraved moral instincts of a Bond villain, and think proactively. Any future assistance on legislation to Trump and McConnell over the coming year should be predicated on both saving the Postal Service and ensuring access to mail-in voting across the country. An election in which one side is lulled into complacency about a pandemic and has lots of polling places available, while the other is rightfully concerned for the public good while also being crushed by long lines and crowded locations, is no true election at all. It’s a mockery of democracy and cannot be allowed to stand.

Arizonans Love Postal Voting. But Even With the Coronavirus, Its GOP Lawmakers Don’t.

AJ VICENS mojo 420

yikes

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/voting-rights-roundup-us-postal-service-could-run-out-of-funds-and-cause-crisis-for-vote-by-mail/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/rnc-chairwoman-claims-all-mail-ballots-proposal-would-vastly-expand-opportunities-for-fraud-as-experts-say-dems-benefit-from-early-voting-opportunities/

gOP is fighting mail-in voting — but Republican voters want it by a huge margin

Joan McCarter / Daily Kos

Donald Trump says “Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to state wide mail-in voting.”

aN 420

‘enormous gamble’: Wisconsin Republicans slammed for discouraging mail-in voting ballots during deadly coronavirus pandemic

Alex Henderson

In Wisconsin, Gov. Tony Evers and other Democrats have — in response to the coronavirus pandemic — been encouraging alternatives to in-person voting. But they have run into a bricK...

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/why-judges-will-likely-play-a-crucial-role-deciding-how-2020-elections-are-run-during-the-pandemic/

why judges will likely play a crucial role deciding how 2020 elections are run during the pandemic

Steven Rosenfeld / Independent Media InstituteApril 3, 2020

no lnx

Why judges will likely play a crucial role deciding how 2020 elections are run during the pandemic

Written by Steven Rosenfeld / Independent Media Institute April 3, 2020

The jaw-dropping conclusion of a federal court hearing on April 1 about Wisconsin’s statewide elections on April 7 was no April Fools’ joke. U.S. District Judge William Conley said the state’s Democratic governor and Republican-led legislature had failed to put their citizenry’s health first by not postponing the statewide election in a pandemic.

“There’s a hurricane coming!” Conley fumed from the bench, interrupting Douglas M. Poland, a lawyer representing the Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans, League of Women Voters of Wisconsin and four citizens who sued the state. “You can’t even give me a case where a federal judge stopped a state from stupidly holding an election when most of the voters were not going to go to the polls because there’s a hurricane coming!”

“You expect the state of Wisconsin to realize that this is a hurricane and for them to stop it for public health reasons,” Conley continued. “But you don’t get to go to a federal judge and say it is contingent on voting rights, so you get to stop a statewide election. The reason you can’t cite me a case is because it’s not appropriate. I’m sorry that that’s what the situation is. But this is a public health crisis that the state legislature and the governor have refused to accept as severe enough to stop this statewide election.”

It is not very often that a federal judge slams a state’s executive and legislative branches from the bench before issuing a ruling. But below theheadline-grabbing pronouncement are equally serious concerns that will resurface in federal and state courts between now and the 2020 general election. Those concerns are how far can a court go—federal or state—to change the means and rules of voting.

Wisconsin was the only state of 11 slated to hold statewide elections in April that did not change its plans. That decision, in part due to Republican legislators wanting to boost the GOP’s odds of winning a state Supreme Court race, sparked three lawsuits. One sought to postpone the election. A second sought to ensure that all absentee ballots that were postmarked by April 7, but arrived in the mail days later, would be counted. The third sought to suspend a state law requiring all absentee voters to have a witness sign their ballot.

Judge Conley’s eruption from the bench concerned Wisconsin political leadership’s irresponsibility for not postponing an election in an unforeseen public health crisis, where the first wave of coronavirus cases is cresting on Election Day and its aftermath—where more than 1.1 million paper absentee ballots have to be authenticated, duplicates removed and counted.

But the other two lawsuits before the court are more relevant for the rest of the 2020 election cycle, as the issues they raise dig into the fine print of policies that state legislatures have adopted and voting procedures that government election bureaucracies subsequently have issued concerning voters and voting by mail.

“What is emerging is a hodgepodge of rules and procedures that will almost guarantee different levels of voter participation depending upon how easy states make it to vote by mail,” said Chris Sautter, an election attorney specializing in recounts and an adjunct professor of government at American University.

Wisconsin’s next election, which is poised to become 2020’s latest problem-plagued exercise, ironically comes in a state that has a reputation for well-run elections. It was the only state of three in 2016 to complete a presidential recount. In 2018, only 6 percent of its 3.44 million registered voters cast absentee ballots. On April 7, nearly six times that volume may vote by absentee ballot. Two of the lawsuits before Judge Conley concerned state policies and rules: what technicalities must be followed for those absentee ballots to count.

During the April 1 hearing, Judge Conley pointedly asked the attorneys representing national and state Democratic Party organizations, voting rights groups, senior citizens and Wisconsin voters what he could do to fix concrete problems that were emerging now—as opposed to speculation about what would implode on Election Day. If problems arose, Conley said he would deal with those issues then. For example, could he issue an order to people who could not find a witness, such as seniors living alone, to have their ballot count? Could he extend the day by which mail-in ballots would still be accepted and be counted, as local officials were still mailing them out and postal delivery was known to be slow?

This posture—respecting a state legislature’s laws and state election bureaucracy’s rules—is the heart of federalism and required by the U.S. Constitution, the judge said from the bench, as he rejected arguments to postpone the April 7 election but struggled to identify remedies that he could order to facilitate voting.

Why these frames matter in 2020 is that there is a spectrum of unevenlaws and rules that currently surround absentee voters, voting by mail and counting those ballots in state after state. These include: how registered voters are notified about voting by mail—or not; how voters apply to vote absentee; ID requirements to get a mail-in ballot; whether additional affidavits or witnesses are required to submit an absentee ballot; whether helping someone to fill out and return a ballot is a crime; whether the state will pay for the postage to return ballots; what voter signatures on file with the state are used to verify or reject the signatures on ballot envelopes; the signature verification standards used; when absentee ballots must be received to count; how long local boards have to do all the processing; and more.

Many of these issues are the subject of pending and possible litigation in state after state, where judges—not legislatures—will decide how 2020’s elections are run during a pandemic. Why not legislatures? Because most 2020 legislative sessions have been suspended, postponed or adjourneddue to the pandemic, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Meanwhile, what has emerged are varying and evolving responses. Lawyers for Democratic Party organizations and voting rights groups are seeking the most sweeping changes to boost participation. Some state election regulators and some governors are taking steps to open up the process, but generally are not going as far as Democrats and voting rights activists would like. And Republicans—especially in states where they hold legislative majorities, like Wisconsin—have been rejecting those efforts, leaving newly identified barriers in place.

The politics behind these decisions and actions are clear. Voting by mail tends to have a higher turnout among middle- and upper-income voters, which favors the GOP. Lower-income people and students often have less reliable and accessible mailboxes. Thus Democrats are seeking to expand participation and remove any barriers. This reality was affirmed by President Trump criticizing the election reforms in the House’s latest relief bill on Fox News on March 31, when he said, “The things they had in there were crazy. They had levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”...

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Arizonans Love Postal Voting. But Even With the Coronavirus, Its GOP Lawmakers Don’t.

‘enormous gamble’: Wisconsin Republicans slammed for discouraging mail-in voting ballots during deadly coronavirus pandemic

why judges will likely play a crucial role deciding how 2020 elections are run during the pandemic

A judge asked Trump to prove claims about mail-in votes and fraud — it didn’t go well Alex H

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel repeatedly voted by mail — before suing California for expanding the practice Igor Derysh / Salon