Trump's RNC officially kills the GOP's mail-in voter effort ( www.msnbc.com )

The Trump-branded Republican Party is less interested in promoting voting by mail than in legal challenges aimed at voting systems.

In a victory for the extremist wing of the Republican Party, it looks like Donald Trump’s hand-picked leadership team at the Republican National Committee has officially scrapped the GOP’s plan to encourage early voting this election cycle. Instead, the party is taking steps to prioritize legal challenges to voting systems ahead of November.

As part of the layoffs and budget cuts carried out this week by the newly installed leadership team, they are shuttering a program dedicated to mail-in voting, according to The Washington Post. The significance, of course, is that Trump has pushed false claims that mail-in voting is rife with voter fraud since 2020, months before he lost the election to Joe Biden. Ever since the election, Trump has continued to spread conspiracy theories that mail-in voter fraud cost him that race. In reality, there’s ample evidence that allowing people to vote by mail doesn’t have a partisan effect (and if it does, data shows the impact appears to favor Republicans).

ctkatz ,

yes, way to not only suffocate your electoral bench by sending every ha-penny to trump but now you're intentionally reducing your potential voting pool and expecting to win bigly.

it would be goddamned hi-larious except for the fact that I know there will be a bunch of local democratic parties that will absolutely fuck this opportunity up.

WashedOver ,
@WashedOver@lemmy.ca avatar

So where is the Tea Party segment of the party sit on these issues? Are they now more center than the Trumpers?

TurtleJoe ,
@TurtleJoe@lemmy.world avatar

The tea party was just a racist reaction to Obama. They pretended to be "fiscally responsible" old school conservatives, but they were in reality just obstructionists who used that excuse to try to sabotage anything that the Obama admin wanted to accomplish.

aStonedSanta ,

That was always my take. They are the we wanna go back crowd from the confederacy.

glovecraft ,

They're the same people for the most part. They've just been incrementally radicalized over the past few decades. Rush Limbaugh -> Fox News -> Tea Party -> Facebook Conspiracies -> Trumpism -> Q Nonsense -> White/Christian Nationalism.

They sit on the issues wherever they're told to sit. If Trump says mail in voting is bad they will cheer as it gets gutted even if it inconveniences them personally.

PumpkinEscobar ,

It's a good thing a lot of elderly voters who can't make it to a polling location don't vote Republican. Oh wait...

ElderWendigo ,
@ElderWendigo@sh.itjust.works avatar

The elderly clearly have no trouble finding the poles and killing a day to vote in person. Limiting mail-in votes mostly hurts the young working class voters who can't get time away from work and other responsibilities or may be taking classes in a state several time zones from their home poling site.

sailingbythelee ,

Is it just me, or does Trump's daughter-in-law give off some serious Serena Joy vibes?

DogPeePoo ,

She’s like Handmaid’s Tale meets Real Housewives of Miami

ghostdoggtv ,

They're so fucking stupid lmao

Riccosuave , (edited )
@Riccosuave@lemmy.world avatar

Look, here's the deal. There are more Republican controlled states than Democrat controlled states. If they intelligently target the voting systems in the available swings states, and manipulate the legal system to purge voter rolls or toss ballots in a more organized fashion than in 2020 we are in serious fucking trouble.

Then there is the threat of armed militia members showing up at polling stations, and you can see where things are going to get crazy in November. I feel bad for anyone that has to put up with that bullshit instead of being able to cast a ballot by mail in 5 minutes, but we are counting on you to help save this country. You are the real heroes, and you deserve maximum respect in my book.

SarcasticMan ,
@SarcasticMan@lemmy.world avatar

This is the ticket here. They have had 4 years to build on their last attempt.

ininewcrow ,
@ininewcrow@lemmy.ca avatar

The problem is not that the RNC are actively trying to do these things to take over government undemocratically.

The biggest problem is the whole rest of the country from it's leadership to its citizens just calmly allowing it all to happen and just slowly sleep walking into fascism without doing very much about it.

Nudding ,

Neoliberals have no problem adapting to life under fascist rule.

Schadrach ,

and manipulate the legal system to purge voter rolls

They have about 4 months during which they can do this (removals have to be done 90 days prior to an election). And they either have to have documentation supporting that the person is dead or has moved, or that person has to have missed two federal elections, been sent a letter about verifying their info, and the person has to have ignored that letter and missed another federal election (at which point the government is allowed to assume you are dead/moved). If they remove you in practically any other situation it violates the NVRA and it's probably time for a lawsuit.

WoahWoah , (edited )

It seems to me the point is that mail-in ballots are often added later in election results. The RNC is reallocating their budget to legal challenges. This seems to anticipate two things:

  1. the idea that mail-in ballots are corrupt will continue to be pushed. The "proof" will be how many more democrats there are in the mail-in ballots, partially due to the RNC attempting to minimize GOP mail-in ballots.

This will be informally reinforced by calls for armed Republicans to "stand watch" (aka voter intimidate) at ballot locations. This will disincentive in-person voting from democrats and increase the chances that mail-in ballots will seem partisan.

  1. based on the actions of #2, on election day live votes will be tallied first, ideally showing a GOP win based on the idea the hope that more GOP will vote in person.

GOP will then immediately declare victory and try to delegitimize mail-in ballots as they begin to be counted and are "suspiciously" (intentionally) largely democratic ballots based on the consequences of #1.

Then they'll try to sue to win by attempting to invalidate all mail-in ballots as "irregular," which they will be, because the republican party will have attempted to make them irregular.

Rapidcreek ,

Money better used for bail.

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