It’s Too Late to Expand Mail-In Voting as Trump Steps Up Attacks
It’s Too Late to Expand Mail-In Voting as Trump Steps Up Attacks
(Bloomberg) -- For all of President Donald Trump’s attacks on Democrats for trying to expand universal mail-in voting, the rules for how voters will get and cast ballots for the Nov. 3 election are pretty much set.
States such as Pennsylvania and New York are still tinkering with deadlines and procedures, but most significant changes would require state laws to be passed, some states are already starting to send out ballots, and the companies that provide election services are already at capacity.
What this means is that voters -- -- especially Democratic voters who are looking for every avenue to make sure their mail-in votes get tallied -- must play by the existing rules. State officials have little leeway at this point to expand the reach of mail-in votes or change the deadlines for submitting ballots, short of getting court orders.
A record number of voters are expected to cast ballots by mail this year due to concerns about the coronavirus pandemic, as Democrats push to make it easier for voters to cast ballots remotely. As many as half of the projected 150 million votes could be cast by mail, according to Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political science professor who tracks voter turnout.
Trump has focused his ire on so-called universal mail-in balloting, where states automatically send a ballot to every registered voter. He’s called it “rigged” and “unfair,” seeking to differentiate it from the kind of absentee ballots he’s casting in Florida.
“This will be the most fraudulent election in history,” Trump said of universal mail-in balloting in an Aug. 20 appearance on Fox News. “It’s just a horrible, horrible thing. And it’s impossible to police.”
Despite Trump’s accusations that Democrats are staging a sweeping expansion of this practice, only nine states, the District of Columbia and some counties in Montana, Nebraska and North Dakota plan to send a ballot to every voter. It’s likely too late for any other state to scale up a universal vote-by-mail system now, said Amber McReynolds, chief executive officer for the National Vote At Home Institute and Coalition.
Of those nine states, Oregon, Washington, Utah and Colorado have been automatically mailing a ballot to every voter for years. and Hawaii was already implementing the practice before the pandemic. Only one of the states expanding the practice, Nevada, is a swing state, where the Trump campaign is suing to stop it.
Even so, Trump’s efforts to cast doubt on the reliability of mail-in votes is alarming Democrats. Data company Hawkfish LLC predicts that more Democrats than Republicans will vote by mail this year, resulting in a “red mirage” -- meaning that Trump could register a lead on Election Night that changes after outstanding ballots are counted. (Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, is an investor in Hawkfish and used it in his Democratic presidential campaign.)
A change in election results after the counting of mail-in ballots and provisional ballots is what Ohio State University professor Edward Foley dubs the “big blue shift,” since the mail-in votes are expected to favor Trump’s Democratic challenger Joe Biden. Foley said there could be multiple states where the presidential race is too close to call on Election Night because of outstanding uncounted ballots.
Election officials in Pennsylvania and Michigan are pushing their Republican-controlled legislatures to change laws that prohibit processing of mail-in ballots until Election Day to allow counties to start tabulating results early to avoid having a backlog of uncounted votes at the end of Election Night.
In Pennsylvania, the House passed such a measure last week that’s now before the Senate. But Democrats argue the bill is too restrictive and would eliminate the use of drop boxes for collecting ballots. Democratic Governor Tom Wolf plans to veto the measure if it remains in its current form.
In Wisconsin, there’s a pending federal court case with a proposal to allow more time for processing mail-in ballots. However the legislature isn’t scheduled to come back into session before the election.
In North Carolina, there have already been almost 16 times more requests for absentee ballots through Sunday compared with the same point in 2016, according to data posted by the State Board of Elections. And while the share of requests by Democrats has increased to 52% from 37% four years ago, requests from Republicans have declined to 16% from 35%, data show. Trump’s railing against mail-in balloting could discourage Republicans from doing it this year, said Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College in North Carolina who tracks early voting.
More than 30 U.S. states have made changes to accommodate mail-in voting in response to the pandemic, with some deciding to mail an application or ballot to every registered voter and others eliminating the need to provide an excuse to get an absentee ballot, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. On Tuesday, for example, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, announced he will allow voters to drop off completed ballots at early voting sites.
It’s possible but unlikely that states such as Arizona, which already have a large percentage of voters on a list to automatically receive a ballot, could expand the practice, said Paul Gronke, a political science professor at Reed College and director of the Early Voting Information Center.
It would be especially difficult for states to hire vendors to process the mailings because they’re already at capacity with the surge in voting by mail across the U.S., said Jeff Ellington, president of Arizona-based Runbeck Election Services Inc., which provides mailing, printing and other election services.
“We’ve been turning down people since July,” Runbeck said.
A June study of universal mail-in ballot results in the states using it from 1996 to 2018 also concluded it increased overall turnout only modestly and didn’t favor one party significantly.
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