President Trump hates mail-in voting, until he doesn’t
Illinois voters must submit their applications either by mail or in person to their local voting jurisdiction. For those who haven’t voted in recent years, applications for each jurisdiction can be found at: https://www.elections.il.gov/electionoperations/VotingByMail.aspx
What’s truly unsettling about Trump’s obsession with mail-in voting is how much it reveals about how little he knows about how states elect presidents.
Yet he does show a keen grasp of what his base prefers. A recent CNN/SSRS poll, for example, found that 59% of voters in Florida who “lean Democratic” said they would prefer to vote by mail ballot, compared with only 21% of Republican-leaning voters.
No wonder Trump hates mail-in ballots except when he doesn’t. For all his unsupported talk about how this election amid the coronavirus pandemic will be the most “inaccurate and fraudulent election in history,” he seems pointedly unconcerned with how to make voting easier for those who want to avoid leaving their homes during a pandemic.
Worse he has stood idly by as concerns have mounted over the speed, funding and efficiency of the nation’s fast pivot to voting by mail this year.
The Brennan Center for Justice, for example, puts the price tag into the neighborhood of a billion dollars for postage, tracking and other security measures. Yet the most recent coronavirus stimulus proposals by Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans he leads haven’t allocated a dime to beefing up for November.
Yet, Trump and his administration appear to be more focused on defunding the Postal Service and the states that have expanded their absentee voting.
Compounding the irony is the recent death of civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, celebrated nationwide for devoting his life — and risking it — to the cause of voting rights for all. That cause is the essence of democracy. It must continue, whether our president supports it every day or not.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
(c) 2020 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
