Is it possible Trump votes by may BECAUSE it is "inherently corrupt?"
Stephen Prager for Common Dreams
The White House confirmed to The New York Times that
the president voted by mail ahead of Florida’s Republican primary on Tuesday,
marking at least the third time he has done so since becoming president. He
also voted by mail in a state legislative special election
earlier this year and in the 2020 Republican primary.
Though Trump has repeatedly characterized mail-in voting itself as a form of
“cheating” and pushed to abolish it for most Americans under his
proposed SAVE America Act, White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said it was a
“non-story” that he chose to participate in the practice himself.
“The SAVE America Act has commonsense exceptions for
Americans to use mail-in ballots for illness, disability, military, or travel—
but universal mail-in voting should not be allowed because it’s highly
susceptible to fraud,” she said. “As everyone knows, the president is a
resident of Palm Beach and participates in Florida elections, but he obviously
primarily lives at the White House in Washington, DC.”
Florida notably does not distinguish between absentee and other forms
of mail-in voting, allowing residents to cast votes without an excuse—so the
system Trump used to vote by mail is the same one he wants to make illegal.
Failing to pass his SAVE America Act through Congress, Trump
has attempted to restrict
mail-in voting via executive order.
An order he signed in March required states to hand over lists of eligible voters to the federal government and said that the US Postal Service could block residents of states from voting by mail if they refused to comply. The order also directed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to create state “citizenship lists” to be sent to election officials.
This order has been blocked in federal court, and Trump has pushed for
the Supreme Court to
allow it to go into effect before the November 3 midterm election. Voting rights advocates
have warned that if the order goes into effect, many eligible voters will
be wrongly excluded because their names don’t appear on
DHS’s federal lists.
There is scarce evidence that any form of mail-in balloting
is susceptible to fraud anywhere near the levels that would be necessary to
swing the result of an election.
An analysis by the Brookings Institution last year, which
examined data from the right-wing Heritage
Foundation’s election fraud database, found that for every 10 million mail
ballots cast, about four ballots were associated with voting fraud, though the
database is not exhaustive.
It’s not clear why voting by mail for convenience would be
any more “susceptible to fraud” than doing so for illness, disability,
military, or travel, as the White House claims.
In fact, the Brookings study found that states with universal no-excuse mail-in
voting have the lowest rates of mail-in fraud, and some states, like
Washington, have seen reductions in fraud after transitioning to universal
mail-in voting.
Advocates for universal mail-in balloting have emphasized
that it makes voting easier and more accessible than when it’s restricted to
election days at physical polling places. They also say restricting it is especially harmful to voters from racial minority groups
who face greater barriers to in-person voting and are more
likely to have absentee ballot applications rejected.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.)
rejected the idea that the right of other Americans to vote by mail was any
less legitimate than Trump’s right to do so.
“Trump just voted by mail AGAIN while trying to take away
the right for millions of people to do the same,” Pressley wrote in a social media post.
“The hypocrisy is the point. We won’t let Republicans attack
the sacred right to vote, including by mail.”
