Already, Democrats and left-wing groups are pushing to make voting by mail easier and giving voters up on how to get good on straight ballots. Republicans are fight voting rule changes in 17 states, goes to court 40 times, signs on a recently doubled legal budget of $ 20 million. The RNC and Trump campaign employs 12 staff attorneys and several dozen more outside attorneys to address the issue nationwide, according to an RNC official.
Republicans have intervened to do so in several states. In Iowa, they have sued to prevent third parties from filling in personal information about voting requests. In Minnesota, they tried to prevent ballots from being sent to inactive voters. And in Nevada, the Trump campaign on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the state over a plan to send votes to active registered voters this November.
“This unconstitutional legislation implements the exact universal voice-by-mail system that President Trump has been warning about for months,” said Jenna Ellis, a senior legal adviser to the Trump campaign.
Republicans have already won some battles. A Democratic super-PAC and other groups with leftists agreed fall a lawsuit over voting rules in Florida after a judge refused to order changes immediately, including a request that the government cover postage for post-a-vote. Another lawsuit seeking to extend the state’s absentee ballot was dismissed in Pennsylvania.
“All politicians are paranoid about possible fraud in their campaigns. And sometimes rightly so, ”said Pat McCrory, the former Republican governor of North Carolina, who accused of fraud when he lost his 2016 re-election bid by 10,000 votes from more than 4.6 million voters. “He knows states like Michigan and North Carolina – like lately – can be close.”
Republicans are not the only ones taking action by mail. Democrats and outreach groups on both sides of the issue have similarly taken to the courts over voting rules – more than 160 lawsuits have been filed nationwide, according to election experts.
The potential problems with submitting mailing are varied and quite. Voting rolls that determine who receives a vote may be invalid, votes could be sent to the wrong address or lost in the email, or voters could cast their ballots for not following instructions, for not having a correct one. signature or having a name that does not exactly match information on file with election officials.
Democrats have argued that these concerns can be addressed through funding, tweaks to the rules and voter education. Conversely, Republicans cited them as reasons to restrict mail-in voting.
‘They are exaggerating and exaggerating the fraud. It’s not a rampant problem, “said Sean Morales-Doyle, deputy director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program, which focuses on suffrage and elections. “It’s not the existential threat that the president says it is.”
But states that allow postal voting have spent years building the infrastructure needed to handle both outgoing and incoming votes, said Hans von Spakovsky, who runs the Conservative Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative .
“We are only three months from the election,” said von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission. “To think that states can do this through November is impractical.”
Trump, impatient with the slow nature of lawsuits, suggested last week that the election be in November postponedalthough he later claimed that he only tried to highlight the possibility of fraud after he got a backlog of even members of his own party. Only Congress can change the date of the election.
Since then, Trump has been practicing to helpers on what executive orders, if any, he could sign to limit voting by mail..
“I have the right to do that,” Trump told reporters Monday. ‘We’ve not been there yet. We’ll see what happens. ”
Yet even conservative allies, including von Spakovsky, are skeptical that Trump has the authority to run in elections. John Yoo, a senior attorney general of Justice Department under former President George W. Bush, agreed. Yoo recently advised the White House on unilateral actions that Trump could take on immigration, health care and taxes. But he said it did not appear Trump could take major executive action on vote via mail-in
Some suggested that Trump could try to stop local officials from counting ballot papers after election day and directed the Postal Service not to provide certain ballots to voters with an emergency statement, according to one of the people.
Paul Steidler, who studies the Postal Service at the right-wing Lexington Institute, said the president could not immediately order the postmaster general to do something, noting that the Chief Service Officer reports to a board of directors.
“He can’t order anything right away,” Steidler said. But others argued that the postmaster general, a Trump ally and Republican financier, might still be influenced by Trump’s statements.
Trump said Monday that the Postal Service is not ready to issue ballot papers. “How can the post office be expected to be treated?” He asked. But Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told the board’s board of directors Friday that the agency will do its job. “We will do everything we can to deliver election time
Election experts said a more likely option for Trump would be to send federal officials into states under the guise of ensuring that every vote is counted, citing the 15th Amendment or the Voting Rights Act.
One of the moves would be immediately challenged in court.
“It would certainly be unmistakable to try to control every aspect of the election process,” said Richard Pildes, a professor of constitutional law at the New York University School of Law and a leading expert on electoral law. “The courts would closely investigate any action.”
