Democrats, along with some Republicans, have argued that President Donald Trump’s attacks on expanded mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic will backfire on Election Day.
According to this line of thinking, discouraging Republican voters, who tend to be older and more rural, from mailing in their ballots will lead many not to vote at all.
But other analysts have identified a method to Trump’s madness, which they say could allow the president to pull off another upset victory and win reelection — with the unwitting help of Joe Biden and the Democrats.
Here’s how: Even as he has bashed mail-in voting in fraudulent and inaccurate, Trump has sought to assure Americans that going to the polling stations will be “very safe” because the coronavirus is “under control.”
Democrats, meanwhile, have been delivering the opposite message: voting by mail is a safe and reliable alternative to trying to vote amid a fearsome pandemic.
- Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has urged a massive federal response to the “growing public health crisis,” including funding for the U.S. Postal Service and state election operations.
- He has called Trump’s opposition to such measures “un-American.”
The upshot has been that Republican voters appear much readier to vote in-person in November than Democrats do.
- According to recent surveys, Republicans are about half as likely as Democrats to fear voting in person or contracting or spreading the coronavirus.
- They also report being significantly less supportive and trusting of voting by mail.
Advantage, Trump: The problem for Biden and other 2020 Democratic candidates is that Trump’s claims about the inaccuracy of voting by mail — if not about its potential for widespread fraud — are well-founded.
- Whereas nearly everyone who votes in person gets their vote counted, a percentage of mail-in ballots end up getting lost or disqualified even under the best conditions, experience and research has shown.
- The rejection rate appears likely to be higher when voting by mail is rapidly expanded, causing voter confusion and overwhelming election officials and party operatives’ ability to get ballots distributed and counted.
Just look at New York’s June Democratic presidential primary.
- After New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, made absentee voting universal in response to the pandemic, more than 400,000 New York City residents mailed in votes, up from 23,000 in 2016.
- According to official figures released on Wednesday, 21% of the ballots, over 84,000 of them, were disqualified because of issues with postmarks or signatures.
- Other voters didn’t receive their ballots until after the primary or had them returned as undeliverable.
- Statewide, the votes took over a month to tally, and several races have remained undecided.
Normally, the logistical problems with mail-in voting have proved manageable, and anyway, have not seemed to favor one of the major political parties over the other.
- But, thanks to the pandemic, this will not be a normal election year, and the divergent signals the parties’ are sending to their respective supporters could make the difference.
Sarah Isgur, a staff writer at The Dispatch and the former deputy campaign manager for Carly Fiorina’s 2016 presidential campaign, on Monday crunched the numbers on how much Trump could benefit from greater in-person voting among his supporters in 2020.
- Isgur estimated 40% of votes will be cast by mail in the election, up from 23% in 2016, and 25% of the ballots will go uncounted.
- She also predicted Trump supporters will vote by mail at one-third the rate of Biden voters.
- Based on those assumptions, Biden would need a 5% margin of victory among people seeking to cast votes to actually collect a majority of ballots — and that’s before taking into account his advantage in the electoral college.
Biden leads Trump by 4-5 points in most of the top battleground states, and the polls are expected to tighten.
