President Donald Trump on Wednesday continued his high profile complaints about mail-in voting in the 2020 elections, but as the U.S. enters the final month of the campaign, only nine states and the District of Columbia will be sending out ballots to all active registered voters, with most of those states expected to support Joe Biden.
“The Unsolicited Ballots Scam is their only hope. Will be the most corrupt election in history, by far!” the President tweeted on Wednesday, continuing to claim that mail-in voting states will be rife with fraud, something which has not been borne out in previous elections.
Of the nine states conducting elections all by mail in 2020, five of them did the same thing in 2016: Washington State, Hawaii, Utah, Oregon, and Colorado.
Four states will be joining the all-mail election effort in 2020, as California, Vermont, New Jersey, Nevada, and Washington, D.C. will mail ballots to all active, registered voters.
California already had a very active mail-in ballot program, as 58 percent of all votes in 2016 were cast by mail.
Worth noting that in none of the big 6 battlegrounds (AZ, FL, MI, NC, PA, WI) are there “unsolicited” mail ballots. All mail votes in these states will be cast because voters asked to vote this way https://t.co/pRkhANZ5xl
— Nick Riccardi (@NickRiccardi) September 2, 2020
While the President has repeatedly registered his opposition to all mail-in voting, he has made clear he supports absentee-by-mail ballots - which is certain to see a dramatic increase in use this November, mainly because of concerns about the Coronavirus outbreak.
But the drumbeat of complaints by the President - echoed by other Republicans - seems to be depressing the normal GOP embrace of absentee-by-mail voting, like in North Carolina.
Already, statistics show the number of mail ballot requests in North Carolina is up 16-fold from the same point four years ago, to nearly 600,000 ballots.
And Democrats account for 53 percent of those mail-in ballot requests, compared to just 15.8 percent for Republicans - with a 208,000 ballot request edge for Democrats.
North Carolina will mail ballots to voters starting on September 4 - the first state to do so.
NC is very, very close to having 600K absentee by mail ballot requests processed
— Michael Bitzer, Ph.D. (@BowTiePolitics) September 2, 2020
A 16X increase in requests from same day in 2016
First batch of ABM ballots will be mailed on Friday (9/4), but likely won't be the full 600K, due to processing (stuffing envelopes, etc)#ncpol https://t.co/nIXYihNAIM
The new Grinnell College National Poll shows more than half of Republicans (52%) say voting through the mail is likely to be “affected by a substantial amount of fraud.” Full crosstabs and methodology here: https://t.co/JhjHl1d0jt
— Grinnell College National Poll (@GrinnellPoll) September 2, 2020
A new poll out on Wednesday from Grinnell College clearly shows the increasing partisan split on voting patterns.
“A majority of Democratic likely voters (57%) say they plan to cast their ballots before Election Day, either through the mail (28%), depositing an absentee ballot in a drop box (11%) or voting early at a satellite location (18%),” the Grinnell-Selzer study found.
“Meanwhile, two-thirds of Republican likely voters say they plan to vote on Election Day.”
GOP strategists are concerned that choice could lead to a lower turnout for Republicans in the 2020 elections, because people sometimes find a reason to not vote when they wait until Election Day.
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