“President Trump and his Republican allies are launching an aggressive strategy to fight what many of the administration’s own health officials view as one of the most effective ways to make voting safer amid the deadly spread of Covid-19: the expanded use of mail-in ballots.
The scene Tuesday of Wisconsinites in masks and gloves gathering in long lines to vote, after Republicans sued to defeat extended, mail-in ballot deadlines, did not deter the president and top officials in his party. Republican leaders said they were pushing ahead to fight state-level statutes that could expand absentee balloting in Michigan, Minnesota, Arizona and elsewhere. In New Mexico, Republicans are battling an effort to go to a mail-in-only primary, and they vowed on Wednesday to fight a new move to expand postal balloting in Minnesota.
The new political effort is clearly aimed at helping the president’s re-election prospects, as well as bolstering Republicans running further down the ballot. While his advisers tend to see the issue in more nuanced terms, Mr. Trump obviously views the issue in a stark, partisan way: He has complained that under Democratic plans for national expansion of early voting and voting by mail, ‘you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.’
At his daily news briefing on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said he believed vote-by-mail had been abused to hurt Republicans, and ‘I will not stand for it,’ though he allowed that mail ballots could help some older voters — an important part of his voting base. It was a slight modulation that came at the urging of his advisers.
In their efforts to fight expanding vote-by-mail, Republican officials are counting on a crucial and powerful ally: like-minded judges.”
If the president is right that republicans are unelectable in free and fair elections, the Trump Party is defunct except by authoritarian measures to suppress voting. ther than declaring martial law and suspending elections, the Trump Party literally has no other choice but to suppress as many democratic voters as possible, even if it suppresses some Trump Party voters in the process. The Trump Party presumably sees suppressed Trump Party votes as just regrettable collateral damage, while suppression of democratic voters is seen as patriotic and good.
As usual, the president presents no evidence to support his bald-faced lie that vote-by-mail had been abused to hurt Republicans. And, once again, the president’s self-interest above democracy, voting and the rule of law is clear and undeniable. Undeniable, that is, except by the president and his supporters and enablers.
In short, the Trump Party is willing to suppress millions of votes and even endanger voter’s lives in their desperation to remain a viable political party. What a pathetic remnant of what once was a principled institution.
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