A state where the GOP controls state house,state senate and governor will almost certainly try to cut down on mail in votes. Anyone disagree?
I disagree. In Arizona, our governor is a Republican and Republicans hold the majority in both houses of the legislature. There were no restrictions on mail-in ballots in 2020 and a mail-in ballot is available to anyone who requests one. You can be put on the permanent mail-in list and automatically receive a ballot before every election.
With the exception of one crackpot, even the Republicans in Washington State seem perfectly happy with all mail-in voting. (The Democrats control the state government, so they couldn’t do much about it anyway, but they’re not even complaining about it)
“Making harder” need not mean “eliminating”. And it will depend on the state, I would not be surprised to see calls for tighter requirements for deadline compliance, chain of custody and other procedural aspects; to seek to have elections boards or Secretaries of State limited in their ability to issue regulatory adjustments by requiring legislative approval; or in states where individual counties have broad faculties in conducting the actual election for the Legislature to go for making it more uniform statewide.
Do look for ALEC or other such outfits to be pitching a Model Mail Vote Act based on the various complaints from the unsatisfied R’s
Even after Trump lost Georgia because of it, and all those Republican candidates were reportedly begging him to lay off mail in voting? Whether Republicans had anything to lose themselves from reducing mail in voting was a common topic during the election season.
It seems likely. Trump has been quoted as saying that if mail-in balloting becomes easy in every state, no statewide republicans will every win again. Clearly an exaggeration, but it is a fear in certain quarters.
And that’s even though the recent election result would not seem to support that fear: Republicans other than Trump did perfectly fine all around and even he had a perfectly respectable showing.
Yes, but you see, according to Trump logic, Donald Trump counts, and people who are not Donald Trump do not count.
Also don’t forget the Republican state election officials all over the country who defended the integrity of their local voting systems regardless (and sometimes in defiance) of Trump’s claims of fraud. I don’t see things changing based on the say-so of (what will soon be) an ex-president.
Those people, the ones who actually run the elections, generally strive to do an excellent job no matter which party they belong to. And that means counting all votes, mail-in or not. And defending the job they did.
But legislatures are not among those people. And legislatures can write rules messing with mail voting if they think it favors the other party.
As a mail-in avocate, I find this unfortunate. I was hoping more states would move to doing all mail-in voting because of the pandemic. California and maybe Hawaii (not sure about their pre-COVID plans) accelerated their plans to go to VbM and DC did it temporarily. Montana allowed counties to do all-mail elections but that’s also temporary, I believe. Otherwise most states just made it easier to apply for absentee ballots. That’s a small step in the right direction, but for many, probably only temporary.
ETA: I guess DC has moved to permanent all-mail voting.
As predicted already started restrictions in Georgia
Anything that restricts voting generally favors Democrats, but in an ordinary year about an equal number of Democrats and Republicans vote by mail, so restrictions shouldn’t tilt the balance of the battlefield. Furthermore mail-in voting is popular among seniors and the military, groups that traditionally support Republicans (which is why I’m confused that the numbers are about equal most years).
I don’t like these anti-democratic (and anti-Democratic) measures, but I also marvel at the idiots damaging themselves in an effort to (legally) steal elections.
Democrats believe restrictions hurt them ,especially with low income people
Did you mean to write “Republicans”?
Anyway, this time they aren’t even pretending to stop voter fraud, right? It’s just that too many of the wrong people voted and they have to put a stop to that. Usually, “voter fraud” is the fig leaf they use to make it harder for minorities and students to vote.
We went to all-mail voting in NJ and I hope we never go back!
The GA proposal to require absentee voters to submit a copy of a photo ID when requesting a ballot and again when sending the ballot back seems designed to create gotchas and reasons to throw away votes. Which of course would make it more difficult for those lacking photo IDs and/or the means to copy them. And we all know that disproportionately affects poor people who are disproportionately minority and Democratic-leaning.
Yeah, sorry.
Oh, you only copied the front, not the back – Into the trash. Oh, I couldn’t read the signature – into the trash. Oh, the copy was too dark – into the trash.
I have a printer/copier in my house – no problem for me! Is the state going to provide those to everyone who wants to vote by mail?
I also love the idea of the vote counters and validators being able to tell the race of the voter before accepting the ballot. I’m sure nothing will go wrong with that!
In 2020, voters turned out at the highest level in 100 years, thanks in part to expanded vote-by-mail. In response, state-level Republicans are introducing an unprecedented amount of legislation to restrict voting rights, according to a new report from the Brennan Center for Justice.
State legislators in 28 states have filed 106 bills restricting the franchise thus far in 2021 — and the overwhelming majority have come from Republicans. Compare that to last year at this time: Then, only 35 such bills had been filed in six states.
“We are seeing a backlash,” says Eliza Sweren-Becker, the report’s lead author. “Rather than going out and trying to persuade voters, we’re seeing legislators trying to shrink the electorate in order to ensure job security for themselves.”
Ultimately, stopping vote by mail is about enabling the rest of the disenfranchisement effort.
It doesn’t do any good to ensure there are almost no polling places in heavily Democratic precincts if they can all just vote by mail.
It doesn’t do any good to station gun-carrying voter suppression goons outside polling places in heavily Democratic precincts if they can all just vote by mail.
It doesn’t do any good to just “lose” ballot boxes from heavily Democratic precincts if everybody in the county mails their ballots to a central facility for counting.
Similarly, I hope Arizona doesn’t eliminate the permanent early voting list.