MaddowBlog-Trump's crusade against mail-in ballots isn't doing Republicans any favors
Republican officials want their party’s voters to cast their ballots through the mail. The president’s rhetoric is undermining his party’s message.
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https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trumps-crusade-mail-ballots-isnt-republicans-favors-rcna225844
Trump echoes comments he said Putin made to him last Friday: "Mail in ballots are corrupt. You can never have a real democracy w/ mail in ballots. We as a Republican Party are gonna do everything possible. We're gonna start with an executive order to end mail in ballots."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-08-18T17:44:45.317Z
.....To justify this radical and aggressive offensive against this form of voting, Trump is peddling a variety of stale lies. More importantly, he’s claiming legal authority he does not have. But whether he realizes it or not, the president is also taking steps that won’t do his party any favors. Politico reported that he’s “once again threatening to undermine” a Republican electoral priority.
Republicans poured tens of millions of dollars last year into convincing their voters that casting ballots by mail was safe after Trump spent years bashing the practice and baselessly insisting it was rife with fraud. And it worked, with GOP voters closing or even reversing the mail voting gap with Democrats in several states. But now Trump is attacking mail voting again as he ratchets up his push to protect Republicans’ House majority in the midterms, scrambling a strategy Republicans effectively used to bank millions of votes in 2024.
Politico quoted Barrett Marson, a longtime GOP consultant in Arizona, who said voting by mail “historically has been an advantage for Republicans” in the Grand Canyon State and is a “safe and secure way to vote and has been for a generation in Arizona.” He added, however, that as the president sows “distrust” in the process and Democrats step up their game, the result is “not good” for Republicans.
It would be tough to blame GOP voters for feeling confused at this point. For years, Trump, the party’s undisputed leader, has veered wildly between two opposite positions. On the one hand, he’s falsely condemned mail-in voting as irredeemably corrupt and “stupid.” On the other hand, in between delivering those condemnations, the president has also encouraged rank-and-file GOP voters to cast their ballots through the mail.
At one point in 2023, Trump even told attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference that it was time for Republicans to “change our thinking” on mail-in voting, and soon after, he filmed a video for the Republican National Committee in support of the party’s early voting initiative.
In Texas, vote by mail is a key part of the GOP GOTV efforts. A larger percentage of GOP voters are older and vote by mail. trump may be hurting GOP GOTV efforts
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Back in 2011, the Texas GOP passed a voter id law that was later largely gutted in court. Part of that voter id law excluded vote by mail ballots from the voter id requirements because at the time, the GOP was relying on vote by mail for voter turnout. The GOP base is older than the Democratic base and tended to vote by mail more that Democrats. In 2010, the GOP had 4 times the number of voters who voted early in the GOP primary compared to Democratic voters. The Democratic Party started to push vote by mail for our eligible voters who may not have had the proper id. Here is a post about the push by the Texas Democratic Party on vote by mail https://www.democraticunderground.com/107814375
Over the years, the Texas Democrats have narrowed the gap in vote by mail ballots. Now trump thinks that Democrats are using vote by mail more that republicans and that appears to be true in some states.
I note that trump has encouraged vote by mail and has voted by mail
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trump may be backing off on abolishing vote by mail
White House changes course after Trump vows executive order to 'end' mail-in voting
— Climate, Ecology, War and More by Dr. Glen Barry (@bigearthdata.bsky.social) 2025-08-20T23:18:15.426048+00:00
->Roll Call | #NoDecency #TrumpFascism | More info from EcoSearch
https://rollcall.com/2025/08/20/white-house-changes-course-after-trump-vows-executive-order-to-end-mail-in-voting/
But White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday, just over 24 hours later, signaled that the administration had ditched the president’s approach.
“The White House continues to work on this, and when Congress comes back to Washington I’m sure there will be many discussions with our friends on Capitol Hill, and also our friends in state legislatures across the country, to ensure that we’re protecting the integrity of the vote for the American people,” she said. “And I think Republicans generally and the president generally wants to make it easier for Americans to vote and harder for people to cheat in our elections.”
Asked what changed so quickly, and whether Trump had received a legal ruling from within the administration that his office lacked the authority to make such a dramatic election change, a White House spokesman merely lobbed accusations at Democrats and repeated Trump’s 2024 campaign platform on the issue.
I would like to hear this from trump. No matter what trump will be changing his minds on this issue