Dem
51
Ties
4
GOP
45
Absentee voting never used to be controversial—until Donald Trump got a bee in his bonnet about how banning it would help Republicans. It is true that Democrats use it more than Republicans, but Trump can't even think a half-move ahead in checkers, let alone win at 3-D chess. Democrats often use it to avoid standing in line on Election Day, but if it is banned or sharply curtailed, their Plan B is to use early in-person voting to avoid the crowds. Republicans in sparsely populated rural areas use it because getting to the polls may involve long drives, which is especially problematic for older voters or people with mobility issues. For overseas voters, mail-in is the only realistic option, but no one knows how they actually skew. Their Plan B is to just not vote. No one really knows what the net effect of eliminating mail-in voting would be.
In September, the Supreme Court shot down Trump's XO ordering the USPS to refrain from delivering absentee ballots to voters not on a list he wanted to concoct based on state lists. While that threat is gone (for the moment), some voters are afraid Trump has more nefarious plans in the works regarding absentee voting.
Since 2020, Democrats have encouraged voters to vote by mail. Now they are rethinking that advice. One group that is especially concerned about whether absentee voting will be possible and whether mail-in votes will be counted is Latinos. Many of them are worried about being arrested at polling places by ICE agents, even if they have proof of U.S. citizenship with them. For them, absentee voting is not a matter of convenience, it is a matter of safety. The same holds to some extent for other voters with brown or black skin.
Fear is running through many communities. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) said that many Maine voters have canceled their standing orders to receive all ballots by mail because they expect them to be seized on the way. She specifically warned against parties discouraging mail-in voting because Maine is a very rural state and for many older and disabled Mainers, mail-in voting is the only option.
In Nevada, Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar (D) is also trying to boost confidence in mail-in voting. He has asked the state's congressional delegation to post observers at the postal facilities that handle Nevada's ballots. He said that the 670,000 Nevadans who voted by mail in 2024 would feel more confident this year if election observers were stationed at USPS facilities. In the past the subject of "election observers" came up only in articles discussing elections in some African country run by a ruthless dictator who was forced to run a mock election to placate some group providing aid to his country. As Bob Dylan pointed out, the times, they are a-changin'.
One grassroots group, Indivisible, is urging voters to vote early, in-person or mail-in, but early in any event. In states that allow voters to verify online that their ballot was received and counted, early absentee voting can be less fearful since the voter can check if the ballot arrived and was counted, but not all states offer this service.
Meanwhile, there was also a newsflash this weekend: All of a sudden, after years of calling absentee ballots terrible and crooked and rigged, now Donald Trump, a long-time absentee voter himself, is urging Republicans to vote by mail. Does this make sense? Were you expecting sense? If so, why? (V)