Mail Chauvinists
I had another article I was in the middle of writing for today, but then the Supreme Court reared its ugly head and pushed things aside. That's when they made an emergency ruling that the Trump administration could continue going forward with his executive order to have the U.S. Postal Service block mailing out ballots to people in states that have met Trump's guideline of providing voter rolls to the federal government.
They had an interesting discussion about it on MSNOW with three eminent lawyers, and there was a mixed sense about the ruling. There’s was also one other factor no one discussed – which I think even if this goes through (still a big "if"), it could backfire on Trump and the MAGOPs.
In general, here is a sense of what was said, along with some of my own thoughts mixed in.
Yes, it’s a terrible ruling. As the Supreme Court knows, mail-in voting is not only legal, it's been legal in the United States for 160 years ever since the Civil War. Moreover, the Supreme Court also knows that the U.S. Constitution says that states alone control their own elections. Congress only has a say when federal elections are held, and the president has absolutely zero role to play in elections. And contrary to what Trump keeps repeating -- that the U.S. is supposedly the only country in the entire world that allows vote-by-mail -- it should not come as a shock that this isn't even remotely true. In fact, over 30 countries allow some form of what they call "postal voting."
As terrible as the ruling is, the decision made clear that it’s only preliminary in order to let the Postal Service go forward with its planning. (Although, not to quibble over facts, the Postal Service actually did announce its plan this past Friday...) Whether the plan they announced is actually legal is a separate matter. And that will be argued in court and ruled on at a later date.
Furthermore, there’s another similar case in which a federal judge put a block on Trump's executive order, and the Supreme Court did not rule on that. The case yesterday was filed by a coalition of Blue states; the one on hold was from the League of Women Voters, and there's still an injunction supporting their lawsuit to block Trump's executive order. And this complicates yesterday's ruling, since there's no way of knowing how the High Court will rule on that.
Even if it turns out that SCOTUS ends up approving the administration plans, there doesn’t appear enough time to put them in operation and change things for the Mid-Terms. Keep in mind that early voting in 13 states starts in only six weeks. In fact, in four of those states it starts in just one month! It's hard to see how even this "bend-over-backwards for Trump" Court would block mail-in voting if a quarter of the states have already begun voting. Add to this that, while the Court could make other emergency rulings as they did yesterday, they are officially on Summer recess until October.
And if all of this does get heard by the Court and if it gets a favorable ruling and if the Trump plans are able to be put into operation for the Mid-Terms, the most important thing of all to remember is: that doesn’t stop people from voting in person at the polls, including (in just four weeks) early voting. It would only stop voting by mail. In some states.
And that leads to the issue not yet being discussed amid all the legal analysis that I think can backfire on Trump and the MAGOP:
If worse comes to worse (and it would be pathetic if it did), and it turns out that many states refuse to turn their voter roll private information over to the administration, and people in those states have to vote at the polls – or feel confused enough that they decide to instead vote in person – then doing so not only takes more effort than the simplicity of voting at home by mail, but it also means lines to vote at polls will likely be longer than expected. And with longer lines and with more effort required, the people who are most motivated to vote are the ones who will go to the polls and will stand in the lines, because they are bursting to vote, whatever it takes, even if it means crawling over glass. And people not as motivated either won’t go to vote, or will go but see the long wait in line and turn around and leave. And what we know from all polls is that Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents are by far the most motivated to vote this year, overwhelmingly. And not only are MAGAs not nearly as motivated, but Trump is not on the ballot which is what has tended to drive the party's base to the polls when they could vote for him. So, to make the effort to go out and vote and stand in lines when you're not all that motivated, feel a bit depressed that conditions are so bad with your party in charge, and the one person you want to vote for is not even on the ballot seems a recipe for MAGOP problems if there isn't easy mail-in voting.
In fact, making this push to undermine mail-in voting by Trump and MAGOPs all the more odd is that up until COVID, their own party was the one who historically benefitted most by voting by mail. And still does benefit most in Red states like Florida with its more-elderly population, and Alaska where distances to vote can be so huge, and even in Red rural states that have distant traveling to vote.
To be clear, yes, the ruling was awful and very disappointing. But there’s a lot of “Well, let’s see what this means” and also – this could also backfire on those happy about it.
Still, as a friend wrote back to me when I sent him some of these thoughts, "I completely agree. But I'm still enraged, as I know you are, at the chutzpah of these ideologues masquerading as jurists, seeking to deliberately ignite completely unnecessary confusion on the eve of an election. There's no other way this can be interpreted.. And they need to be repudiated and humiliated with legislation that curtails their sense of omnipotence."
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