Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee have taken to the courts dozens of times as part of a $20 million effort to challenge voting rules, including filing their own lawsuits in several battleground states, including Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Nevada. And around the time Trump started musing about delaying the election last week, aides and outside advisers began scrambling to ponder possible executive actions he could take to curb mail-in voting — everything from directing the postal service to not deliver certain ballots to stopping local officials from counting them after Election Day.
[...]
[S]ome fellow Republicans are warning the president privately and publicly that attempts to restrict mail-in ballots could actually hurt the GOP in November, scaring Republicans from voting remotely even if they also refuse to vote in person during a pandemic. New polling has fueled these concerns.
[...]
Trump fans, said John Fredericks, a conservative radio host who serves on the Trump campaign’s advisory committee, “think Trump is going to win legitimately, but the Democrats are trying to steal the election by manipulating mail-out ballots. They want the president to jawbone enough so there’s a level of outrage to get rid of these ballots.”
[...]
Some have predicted the crush of remote voting could mean a final winner in the presidential race between Trump and Democrat Joe Biden won’t be known for days or even weeks. Democrats are pushing for $25 billion for USPS in the next coronavirus recovery bill to help address those concerns, but it remains a source of disagreement with Republicans.
[...]
Voting specialists also note that five states — Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington — already conduct elections entirely by mail with few problems. This fall, three additional states — California, Vermont and Nevada — plan to send ballots to registered voters because of the pandemic.
[...]
Republicans are fighting voting rule changes in 17 states, going to court 40 times, drawing on a recently doubled legal budget of $20 million.
[...]
In Iowa, they sued to prevent third parties from filling out personal information on absentee ballot requests. In Minnesota, they tried to prevent ballots from being sent to inactive voters. And in Nevada, the Trump campaign on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the state over a plan to send ballots to active registered voters this November.
[...]
Republicans aren’t the only ones taking action on mail-in voting. Democrats and outside groups on both sides of the issue have similarly taken to the courts over voting rules — more than 160 lawsuits have been filed nationwide, according to election experts.
[...]
The Trump campaign is holding events touting its legal actions on voting rules. And privately, the White House is debating possible further action, according to two people familiar with the situation.
[...]
Trump, impatient with the slow nature of lawsuits, suggested last week that the November election be postponed, though he later claimed he was merely trying to highlight the possibility of fraud after he faced a backlash from even members of his own party. Only Congress can change the date of the election.
Since then, Trump has mused to aides about what executive orders, if any, he could sign to curb voting by mail.
“I have the right to do it,” Trump told reporters Monday. “We haven’t gotten there yet. We’ll see what happens.”
[...]
“He can’t order anything directly,” Steidler said. But others argued the postmaster general, a Trump ally and Republican fundraiser, might still be influenced by Trump’s statements.
Trump said Monday the Postal Service isn’t prepared for the onslaught of ballots. “How can the post office be expected to handle?" he asked. But Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told the Postal Service Board of Governors on Friday the agency will do its job. “We will do everything we can to deliver election mail in a timely manner consistent with our operational standards,” he said.
Politico
No comments:
Post a Comment