The Washington Post reported last month that President Trump made 18,000 false or misleading claims through his first 39 months in office. About one-fifth of those were made on Twitter, his favorite social media platform. And those 18,000 don't even include lies he told during his 2016 campaign, meaning that list is missing such gems as, Mexico is forcing its criminal population over the border into the US, and climate change is a hoax created by China.
But today, May 26, was a day for an amazing precedent. From the Washington Post, "Twitter on Tuesday slapped a fact-check label on President Trump’s tweets for the first time, a response to long-standing criticism that the company is too hands-off when it comes to policing misinformation and falsehoods from world leaders."
And the substance of that too-false-for-Twitter tweet? Myths about mail-in election ballots: "There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone.........living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote. This will be a Rigged Election. No way!"
In a number of ways, Donald Trump can be characterized as a reactionary Republican. One definition of a reactionary is, "a politician or political philosopher who wants to reverse political changes and seeks to restore society to a state believed to have existed before." That one fits Trump to a "T". His "Make America Great Again" slogan roughly translates to, "Make America like the 1950s, when brown people were few and seldom seen, and coal plants and cars spewed pollution as much as they pleased."
Another definition of reactionary: One who is opposed to change. And boy oh boy is Trump opposed to anything that would make it easier for citizens to vote. Two reasons for this. First, it's become a tenet of Republican orthodoxy that they should make it as difficult as possible for everyone to vote, given that restrictions such as requiring a photo ID at polling places usually place a heavier burden on Democrats than it does Republicans. Second, Trump would like the public to believe that he didn't really lose the popular vote in 2016 to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes. No no, the election was stolen by illegal ballots. So let's get going with,
Part Sixteen. Election Integrity and Vote by Mail
Myth: "In addition to winning the electoral college in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." - Donald Trump, November, 2016
Fact: Fact-checking organizations have found zero evidence to back Trump's claim. Even conservative sources that have sometimes suggested voter fraud among Democrats have quietly let this claim molder without attempting to support it. Trump tried to gin up the claim himself through the creation of a disastrous "Commission on Election Integrity" headed by former Kansas Secretary of State Chris Kobach. Mr. Kobach failed miserably in his attempts to identify any voter fraud at all before limping home to Kansas, where, (from Mark Joseph Stern of slate.com) "a federal judge fined Kobach $1,000 in
June (2017) for making "patently misleading representations to the court" about
a document he’d taken to his initial meeting with Trump, one that
proposed eviscerating a federal voting rights law."
Myth: A shift to making voting easier would mean "you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again." - Donald Trump, appearing on Fox News
Fact: From Michael Sozan of The Center for American Progress, "Trump has caved to fears that expanding
vote-by-mail options would hurt Republicans’ election chances. Not only
is it dangerous for Trump to continue making life-or-death decisions
based on politics, but his fears are also misplaced.
Researchers have found that voting by mail does not meaningfully benefit
either major political party. Recent history bears this out, as
Republicans have regularly won elections in states that have moved
almost completely to voting by mail."
Also, from John Whitesides and Julia Harte of Reuters, "Trevor Potter, a Republican former chairman of the Federal Election Commission who founded the Washington-based Campaign Legal Center, said Trump’s reaction was puzzling since Republicans often do well in mail-in balloting. "Polls show older Americans, those thought to be most vulnerable to the virus, are more likely to support President Trump than other voters," Potter said, adding conservative Utah is one of five states that has gone to all-mail voting with little sign of fraud."
Myth: "Democrats continue to use this pandemic as a ploy to implement their partisan election agenda, and Governor Newsom's executive order is the latest direct assault on the integrity of our elections." - RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, in a recent reaction to California Governor Gavin Newsom's announcement that the state would be mailing absentee ballots to all voters ahead of the 2020 general election, a move that was made in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
-And- "The United States cannot have all Mail In Ballots," "It will be the greatest Rigged Election in history. "People grab them from mailboxes, print thousands of forgeries and 'force' people to sign. Also, forge names. Some absentee OK, when necessary. Trying to use Covid for this Scam!" - Donald Trump on Twitter, on the push for mail-in ballots as a response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Fact: From Abby Phillip of CNN: "There is no evidence to support the President's claim that "thousands" of forgeries are linked to vote-by-mail or that there is widespread evidence of people being coerced to sign absentee ballots." "Studies have found no evidence of widespread voter fraud as a result of in-person or mail-in voting."
The Brennan Center for Justice notes
that none of the five states that conduct their elections primarily by
mail have had any voter fraud scandals since making that change.
The Center for American Progress also notes, "Since 2000, approximately 250 million votes have been cast via mailed ballots in all 50 states combined. In 2018, more than 31 million Americans, nearly 26 percent of election participants, voted by mail. In the 2016 presidential election, 23 percent of Americans voted by mail. Moreover, military personnel serving overseas rely on vote-by-mail options, with hundreds of thousands casting their ballots by mail in recent elections." The President's statements, "are particularly ironic given that Trump himself requested a mail-in ballot for Florida’s Republican primary in March 2020 and has voted absentee by mail in previous elections. Similarly, Vice President Mike Pence and several Cabinet secretaries, as well as Trump’s family members, have voted by mail."
Myth: "And you do have cases of fraudulent ballots where they actually print them and they give them to people to sign, maybe the same person signs them with different writing, different pens. I don’t know. It’s a lot of things can happen." - Donald Trump, in a recent interview after he threatened "hold up" federal funding to Michigan and Nevada in response to those states’ plans to increase voting by mail to reduce the public’s exposure to the coronavirus.
Fact: From voteathome.org: "every return ballot envelope is signed by the voter, and each signature is validated based on official signatures already on file–e.g. the voter’s registration document, prior election ballot envelopes, motor vehicle transactions, etc."
Myth: Former President Jimmy Carter believes that mail-in voting is a source of potential voter fraud.
Fact: Carter was part of the Commission on Federal Election Reform, which expressed this concern in 2005. President Carter now says that today's safeguards mean potential voter fraud is no longer a concern, and he supports making mail-in voting a nationwide option this year.
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In conclusion, a recent Fox News poll found that 63
percent of respondents - including a majority of independents and
Democrats as well as 42 percent of Republicans - favor allowing all
Americans to vote by mail ahead of the November election. Let's hope that nationwide vote by mail becomes a reality.
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