This archive report was first published on 21 May 2020.
As Trump Rails Against Voting by Mail, States Open the Door for It ¶
President Trump has taken a stand against voting by mail, threatening to withhold federal grants to Michigan and Nevada if they send absentee ballots or applications to voters. However, his opposition has not stopped states from moving forward with mail-in voting.
Eleven of the 16 states that limit who can vote absentee have eased their election rules this spring to let anyone cast an absentee ballot in upcoming primary elections. Four of those states are mailing ballot applications to registered voters, just as Michigan and Nevada are doing.
“Every once in a while you get the president of the United States popping up and screaming against vote-by-mail, but states and both political parties are organizing their people for it,” said Michael Waldman, the president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. “It’s a bizarre cognitive dissonance.”
Many of the states that have relaxed their rules have done so only for pending primary elections, leaving the possibility that they could choose not to do so in November. However, experts say that is highly unlikely.
“The horse is out of the barn whether it’s primaries or the general election,” said Daniel A. Smith, a University of Florida political scientist and expert on mail ballots. “The optics are such that states will be under enormous pressure to continue to allow mail voting in the fall.”
Even as the president has offered support for some groups of absentee voters like older Americans and military serving abroad, he has regularly warned that allowing widespread voting by mail was a recipe for election theft.
However, some conservative advocacy groups have embraced Mr. Trump’s view, even going to court to block the expansion of absentee balloting during the pandemic. Republican-controlled legislatures in Louisiana and Oklahoma have also bridled at making voting easier.
But in many other states, governments controlled by each of the political camps have moved in the other direction. In lawsuits and elsewhere, voting-rights advocates and Democrats have taken aim at state rules on voting that they see as discriminatory.
“The biggest challenge I have right now is making the concept of absentee voting less toxic for Republicans,” said Michael G. Adams, the Republican secretary of state in Kentucky. “Before 2018, Republicans loved mail balloting.”
Mr. Trump said in March that Democrat-backed election proposals for expanded voting by mail would ensure that “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” However, experts say that expanding mail voting would not favor either party.
And in any case, mail voting is increasingly the norm everywhere: In 2016, nearly one in four voters cast absentee or mail ballots, twice the share just 16 years ago, in 2004.
