WASHINGTON – Even as President Donald Trump continues to make unfounded claims about the security of vote via mail-in, Republican voters in at least three major battlefield states receive flyers in the mail urging them to cast absent votes.
In one email to Republicans in Arizona, the state Republican Party encourages people to vote by mail. It has a picture of Trump with a quote from his July 30 saying, ‘I will be an absent voter. We have many absent voters. It works, so we are in favor of absent. It includes a return address label for voters to return this application directly to the province.
In North Carolina, Republican voters also received a similar email with a picture of the president and the words “urgent notice.” It also says: “Your official status of absent ballot needs your attention” and includes a July quote by the president that says “Absentee ballots are fine, because you have to go through a precise process to get your voting rights.”
A similar flyer was sent to Republican voters in Pennsylvania, and the state Republican Party has detailed, step-by-step instructions posted on its website on how to vote by mail or by absent vote.
Both the North Carolina parties and the Republicans in Arizona confirmed to NBC News that they are sending out the flyers and encouraging Republicans to vote absent.
And they, like the president, are trying to differentiate between post-vote and absentee ballots.
“The North Carolina system is substantially different from the last-minute radical election program for all e-mails, in which millions of votes are sent inadvertently based on incomplete data. We, along with President Trump, oppose these almost-introduced e-mails that ignore common sense security measures, “said North Carolina Press Secretary Tim Wigginton.
In North Carolina, a voter must request an absentee ballot and has the option to post it or leave it at a polling station in person.
The issue came to the fore when the president continued to send mail by mail and at the same time fraudulently mentioned that the postmaster general made changes to the US Postal Service and warned that the system would not be able to meet its voting dates. if they were too close to election day.
After a week of building political pressure, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced this week that he would halt some of the changes to mail processing.
As more states adopt ballots by mail, there is a deep partisan divide over voters’ concerns about the upcoming election, in which, according to a recent poll by NBC News / Wall Street Journal, nearly half of the supporters of the Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said they would vote by post compared to just 20 percent of Trump supporters.
And North Carolina is experiencing a massive increase in voter turnout, mostly from Democrats, a major shift from previous elections.
Nearly 296,000 people have so far applied to run in North Carolina, compared to just 26,000 at this point four years ago. The party leadership is also dramatically different. In 2016, Republicans and Democrats demanded roughly the same number of absentee ballots. Currently, Democratic voters represent more than half of all candidates compared to only one-fifth of Republican voters, according to the North Carolina Board of Elections.
“Voting by unanimous vote in North Carolina – which is the same as voting by mail – is safe, secure and reliable,” said Austin Cook, the North Carolina Democratic Party’s communications director. “(Trump’s) ominous attacks are hypocritical and heady, and as the latest figures of absentee ballots show, they do not dampen the enthusiasm that voters should replace here in November.”
Both Arizona and North Carolina are critical states in the president’s path to victory. And both also have competitive congressmen who could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.
But Republicans warn that the president’s attempt to undermine confidence in the mail-in vote could also undermine him in Arizona, where he is undersold and is likely to disrupt rural counties, which ‘ t historically by post have voted at high rates.
“President Trump, who keeps asking questions when voting by mail, will not help our numbers in Arizona,” said Barrett Marson, a veteran GOP strategist behind DefendArizona, a super PAC supporter of Senate Martha’s current bid. McSally. “It is of the utmost importance that Republicans trust the post-in-the-vote system that we have had for a generation and that they use it.”
Just over one-fifth of voters voted by post in the 2016 election, a number that is expected to grow as more states allow voting methods and as a pandemic continues with regular activities. Only six states in the upcoming election require an apology to vote by post as absent.
In 2016, Trump won with 31 percent in Yavapai County, where 80 percent of voters, more than in any other province in Arizona, cast ballots by mail.
Arizonans throughout the state vote primarily by mail. In August, 92.6 percent of voters in Maricopa County, representing about 60 percent of the state’s primary, voted primarily by mail-in ballot. And during the 2018 general election, 78 percent of voters used statewide post-vote.
At one point, Republicans in the state held the advantage among voters who signed up for the state’s permanent list of permanent votes, which automatically encouraged county officials to send a voter a vote for each election. But in recent years, and even today, Democratic organizations have worked to enroll Democrats on this list.
Democrat Mark Kelly’s campaign, which is running for the U.S. Senate, has sent more than 500,000 mailing applications by mail, but – unlike the GOP in Arizona – included paid postage to make it easier for its voters to return to their respective county election officials.
