The GOP's campaign to throw out mail-in votes
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 8 October 2024
⏱️ 34 minutes
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Summary
On today’s “Post Reports,” we look into why Republicans are waging legal battles to disqualify mail-in ballots, and why rhetoric against mail voting might actually hurt their presidential candidate.
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Since 2020, the Republican Party has waged a nationwide legal campaign to reject mail-in ballots.
From Wisconsin to North Carolina to Nevada, Republicans say much of their litigation is aimed at enforcement of election law, down to the letter. But critics see a strategy that has nothing to do with election integrity — and everything to do with disqualifying voters who cast ballots by mail, an overwhelming majority of whom support Democrats.
At the same time, Republicans are also ramping up their get-out-the-vote operations, which include pushing their supporters to use mail-in ballots.
On today’s “Post Reports,” Elahe Izadi speaks with democracy reporter Colby Itkowitz about Republicans’ efforts to get mail-in ballots thrown out in Pennsylvania, and about the have-it-both-ways strategy they’re employing in this election.
And we hear from an election official in Pennsylvania’s Lycoming County — a GOP-leaning area in the center of the state — who’s sick of the fighting.
Today’s show was produced by Rennie Svirnovskiy, with help from Sabby Robinson and Laura Benshoff. It was edited by Reena Flores and mixed by Sean Carter. Thank you to Griff Witte and HyoJung Kim.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In August of 2020, |
| 0:04.0 | 2020, then President Donald Trump released a video. |
| 0:07.0 | It was of him filling out an absentee ballot, |
| 0:10.0 | that's a ballot to vote by mail. |
| 0:12.0 | Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it to the polls to vote in the Florida primary. |
| 0:17.0 | I have some very, very strong opinions in the primary, but even stronger on November 3rd. |
| 0:21.0 | You know what we're going to do. Make America great |
| 0:24.2 | again. That's what we have to do. We have no choice. We have to save our country. So I'm |
| 0:29.1 | signing today an absentee ballot. In the video he sits at a long wooden desk first talking into the |
| 0:35.8 | camera and then working on his ballot and then he starts to bash voting by |
| 0:41.7 | mail. So absentee ballots are good. |
| 0:45.0 | Universal mail-ins, when you get inundated with these things, |
| 0:49.0 | are bad and will lead to terrible things, |
| 0:51.0 | including voter fraud, etc. |
| 0:53.9 | But absentee is good. |
| 0:55.9 | So get your application, send in your absentee ballots immediately. |
| 0:59.8 | Thank you. |
| 1:02.8 | To be clear, what Trump is talking about here is confusing, because absentee ballots, |
| 1:08.2 | mail-in ballots, they are the same thing. |
| 1:11.5 | But since 2020, Trump and Republicans have spent years bashing mail-in voting. |
| 1:17.0 | And today, they're using the legal system to undermine this method of voting in key states ahead of the presidential election. |
| 1:27.0 | Republicans have filed lawsuits in many, many states, including some of the major swing states, like Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, |
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