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Trump Appreciation and 2020 Keep America Great Campaign


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President Donald Trump has repeatedly tried to draw a distinction between "mail-in voting" (which he thinks is bad and open to fraud) and "absentee voting" (which he says is good and might help him get reelected).

 

It's a confusing distinction because it doesn't really exist.

 

He has adjusted his rhetoric in the past few weeks. It's not just "mail-in" voting he now opposes, but rather, as he has put it, "universal mail-in voting." During a press conference last week, he explained why he's all for absentee voting, but opposed to mail-in voting:

 

"Absentee voting is great. You request -- I'm an absentee voter because I requested, I got, and then I sent in my vote. So that works out very well. That's what we've had. But now they want to send in millions and millions of ballots."

 

However, in contrast, he said universal mail-in voting would be very very bad:

 

"Universal mail-in voting is going to be catastrophic. It's going to make our country a laughingstock all over the world. You can't send out millions of ballots."

 

But here's the thing. A whole lot of absentee voting (most of it!) is done by mail. An absentee vote is a vote cast outside of the voting booth, traditionally for very specific and limited reasons. There's been some version of absentee voting by mail since the Civil War, when troops voting from the battlefield helped Abraham Lincoln win reelection.

 

It's worked so well that several states have moved to all mail-in voting system, where they automatically send ballots to all registered voters. Oregon is the classic example of "universal mail-in voting" since mail-in voting is all they do.

The distinction, as it seems to exist in Trump's mind, appears to be between states that conduct their elections primarily by mail and those that require voters to request a ballot to be turned in by mail.

 

Trump says automatically sending mail ballots to all registered voters is BAD. But having to request your mail ballot is GOOD. The first system is often called "universal vote-by-mail" or "all-mail" election. The second system is called "absentee voting" and can be "no-excuse" or no excuse required.

 

This year's election, partly because of a general trend toward away from polling-place voting and partly because of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, is going to see more mail-in ballots than ever. According to a new CNN poll, in which 34% say they prefer to vote by mail in the presidential election, 22% say they want to vote early at a polling place, and just 43% say they would prefer to vote in-person on Election Day.

 

That represents a 10-point increase over the share who voted by mail in 2016: 24%, according to the US Election Assistance Commission.

 

There are 50 US states and in 42 of them, for this year, anyone who wants to vote by mail can do so.

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The number is 73 actually and means less than zero.

it truly is stunning that the left keeps trying the same things that have failed again and again. I'd like to be a fly on the wall when one of them noobs said "hey, lets get a whole bunch of ex-republicans to attack trump, we'll have them sign a letter and put it out right after the DNC convention"", and then the other guy says 'great idea". :laugh

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