In the pandemic election of 2020, restricting access to the ballot box is as simple as restricting access to the mailbox. And this week, Donald Trump accelerated efforts to do just that. On Thursday, he openly linked his efforts to block full funding of the postal service with his crusade against mail-in voting. The same day, a top adviser derided congressional efforts to safeguard voting rights as part of a “liberal, left wish list” that is “not our game.” On top of that, the new postmaster general Louis DeJoy — a right-wing millionaire who’d previously been tapped as the chief fundraiser for the 2020 Republican National Convention — cleared house at USPS in a “Friday Night Massacre,” while carrying out plans to dismantle mail sorting equipment and remove mailboxes from the streets. The attempt to create election dysfunction in November is as blatant as it is brazen.
The effort to sabotage mail-in voting is no surprise to close watchers of Donald Trump’s Twitter feed. Since early spring, the president has railed against the shift to vote-by-mail, which has been made essential by his mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic. Although Trump himself votes by mail, he has been blasting absentee balloting as a threat to Republican electoral prospects, crying out that it is a fraud, a scam, cheating, and “the scandal of our times.”
Trump first began beating this drum back in April, calling on the GOP and Fox News to “fight very hard” against mail-in ballots:
Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to state wide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it. Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans. @foxandfriends
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2020
Making a counterfactual charge (mail-in voting has a remarkably clean track record), Trump insisted absentee balloting leads to “VOTER FRAUD” and stolen elections. When Nevada moved to ensure vote-by-mail access, Trump said the state was “creating a great Voter Fraud scenario” and he threatened to “hold up funds to the state” as a form of revenge.
Mail in ballots substantially increases the risk of crime and VOTER FRAUD!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2020
State of Nevada “thinks” that they can send out illegal vote by mail ballots, creating a great Voter Fraud scenario for the State and the U.S. They can’t! If they do, “I think” I can hold up funds to the State. Sorry, but you must not cheat in elections. @RussVought45 @USTreasury
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 20, 2020
By May, the misinformation he was spreading was so extreme, Twitter tagged the president’s tweets as “unsubstantiated.“
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…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020
But Trump kept going, insisting that America “can’t let large scale Mail-In Ballots take root in our Country,” insisting it would lead to a “free for all on cheating.”
….happen again. Just like we can’t let large scale Mail-In Ballots take root in our Country. It would be a free for all on cheating, forgery and the theft of Ballots. Whoever cheated the most would win. Likewise, Social Media. Clean up your act, NOW!!!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 27, 2020
Framing the move to mail-in voting in expressly partisan terms, Trump then insisted that vote-by-mail will “lead to the end of our Great Republican Party.”
MAIL-IN VOTING WILL LEAD TO MASSIVE FRAUD AND ABUSE. IT WILL ALSO LEAD TO THE END OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY. WE CAN NEVER LET THIS TRAGEDY BEFALL OUR NATION. BIG MAIL-IN VICTORY IN TEXAS COURT TODAY. CONGRATS!!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2020
By June, the president’s tone had shifted somewhat. Seen in the most sinister light, this particular tweet seems less like a warning against foreign intervention, and more like an invitation, from a president who benefited from Russian interference in the 2016 election and was impeached for seeking election favors from Ukraine.
RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2020
As the pandemic he has utterly mismanaged experienced a summer resurgence, driving home the need for absentee balloting as a public health measure, Trump whined that states “are using Covid in order to cheat.”
Because of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, 2020 will be the most RIGGED Election in our nations history – unless this stupidity is ended. We voted during World War One & World War Two with no problem, but now they are using Covid in order to cheat by using Mail-Ins!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2020
Mail-In Voting, unless changed by the courts, will lead to the most CORRUPT ELECTION in our Nation’s History! #RIGGEDELECTION
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 21, 2020
With his own past history of voting by mail coming under scrutiny, Trump tried to split hairs between absentee voting and mail-in voting, which are exactly the same thing.
Glad I was able to get the very dishonest LameStream Media to finally start talking about the RISKS to our Democracy from dangerous Universal Mail-In-Voting (not Absentee Voting, which I totally support!).
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2020
Finally, as his own re-election numbers cratered, along with a third of the nation’s GDP, Trump cited “inaccurate & fraudulent” mail-in voting as a reason to delay the election.
With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2020
Trump’s Twitter rants have now become official efforts to tamper with the postal service. And the effort is so ham-fisted that the current president is now being trolled by his predecessor. Citing the essential services provided by the Postal Service, Barack Obama called out Trump for being “more concerned with suppressing the vote” than doing the most urgent work of the White House: suppressing the coronavirus.
Everyone depends on the USPS. Seniors for their Social Security, veterans for their prescriptions, small businesses trying to keep their doors open. They can't be collateral damage for an administration more concerned with suppressing the vote than suppressing a virus.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 14, 2020
