Elections: Creating doubt about mail-in ballots

Mail-in ballots waiting to be sorted in California — California mail-in ballots waiting to be counted

(Image credit: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg / Getty Images)

It’s a pattern “as regular and predictable as the tides,” said Moira Donegan in The Guardian: A Democrat wins an election, and President Trump says the election was rigged. His latest target is the Los Angeles mayoral primary, where Republican Spencer Pratt fell to third place—and off the November ballot—behind Democratic incumbent Karen Bass and progressive challenger Nithya Raman as late-arriving mail-in ballots were counted. Trump has since repeatedly alleged, without evidence, that the election was stolen, even storming off Meet the Press when challenged on the claim. This is “a preview of what is likely to come” in November’s midterm elections, when Republicans are widely expected to lose congressional seats and control of the House. In Trump’s world, every Democratic victory is “invalid, fraudulent, and null,” and the only fair elections “are the ones where Republicans win.”

Unfortunately, the Right “seems to be along for the ride,” said Aaron Blake in CNN.com. Prominent Republicans, including JD Vance, Ron DeSantis, and Mike Johnson, have amplified Trump’s baseless claims, with Johnson saying Democratic election fraud is “so diabolical and so far upstream it is impossible to prove.” Polls show that 70% of Republicans expect election fraud in November. Trump has a new plan to block mail-in ballots, said Adam Sella and Nick Corasaniti in The New York Times. The U.S. Postal Service has proposed an “unprecedented and potentially unconstitutional” rule that would allow it to refuse delivery of mail-in ballots in states that won’t turn over voter rolls to the federal government for “screening.” Trump recently told a group of GOP lawmakers that restricting mail-in ballots “will guarantee the midterms.”

“It does, in fact, take a long time to count ballots in California,” said Jessica Levinson in MS.now. The state accepts all ballots postmarked by Election Day, even those that arrive up to a week after. Does that sometimes mean that initial results change? “Absolutely. That’s what happens when you count votes.” Sorry, that’s no excuse, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. California Democrats have made it “exceptionally easy” to cast ballots by mail to boost turnout among their likely voters, but the result is a “sloth-like” ballot count that can leave results in question for days. It’s a “disservice to democracy” to leave voters hanging, which can only “fuel distrust in elections and play into the hands of Trump.”

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