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Mail-in voting: Has Trump been using reverse psychology?

#1
C C Offline
Democrats Should Curb Their Enthusiasm for Mail-in Voting
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2...ing-407939

EXCERPTS: . . . if President Donald Trump is vociferously against it, Democrats must be vociferously for it, and vice versa. [...] Absentee voting isn’t as secure as in-person voting, but there’s no evidence of widespread fraud, as Trump repeatedly alleges, sometimes in ALL CAPS. Nor is there any evidence that, at least prior to this campaign, mail-in voting has favored Democrats, as the president also believes.

[...] there hasn’t been enough focus on the other side of equation: Does it make sense for Democrats to be such fervent boosters of a process that may lead to a historic number of votes cast in a presidential election not counting? ... there is inevitably going to be more mail-in voting this fall, given fears of the coronavirus. ... But in-person voting is superior. Only about one-hundredth of 1 percent of in-person votes are rejected, whereas rejection rates of 1 percent are common with mail-in votes, and many states exceeded that during their primaries this year.

This should be a five-alarm worry for Democrats. According to polling, almost twice as many Biden supporters as Trump supporters say they’ll vote by mail this year. According to NPR, studies show “that voters of color and young voters are more likely than others to have their ballots not count.”

In another universe, if Donald Trump were urging Democrats to stay away from the polls and instead use the method much more likely to get their votes discarded, it’d be attacked as a dastardly voter-suppression scheme. There are at least three ways that mail-in voting could contribute to a 2020 nightmare...

[...] The primaries have been a mail-in balloting preview. More than a half-million ballots were rejected in the presidential primaries. Ballots are rejected for improper postmarks and signatures, and mail-in voters are also more prone to accidentally vote for more than one candidate or make other elementary errors that are caught and corrected when voting in-person. First-time mail-in voters are most likely to mess it up.

[...] In light of all this, it makes sense to try to make available more options for in-person voting. [...] What should be intolerable is any attempt to change the rules after the fact, although it’s entirely conceivable that Democrats will feel compelled after November 3 to argue that the mail-in voting that they’ve done so much to promote is desperately flawed and unjust... (MORE - details)
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#2
Syne Offline
There is evidence of, at least, possible result-altering unintentional voter disenfranchisement in many places, and some actual voter fraud charges related to voting by mail.

An extraordinarily high number of ballots — more than 550,000 — have been rejected in this year's presidential primaries, according to a new analysis by NPR.

That's far more than the 318,728 ballots rejected in the 2016 general election and has raised alarms about what might happen in November when tens of millions of more voters are expected to cast their ballots by mail, many for the first time.
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/22/904693468...acing-2016


Judge orders new election in New Jersey race Trump cited for mail-in voter fraud
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-bat...or-mail-in


In this universe, Trump urging Democrats to vote in person IS being "attacked as a dastardly voter-suppression scheme". But yes, Democrats are just laying the groundwork for their excuses when they lose.

If Democrats were arguing in good faith, they should be pushing for two days to vote in person, to reduce crowds and waiting in line, and putting up ballot drop boxes ( https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/...ost-office ) to avoid the post office.
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