That’s why Michelle Obama took time to lure Trump into her speech on Monday to urge supporters to vote early – but also to keep their votes narrow when voting by post or, if they feel able, to vote in person.
‘We need to vote early, in person if we can. “We have to request our mail-in ballots from today, tonight and send them back immediately and follow up to make sure they are received,” Obama said. “And then make sure our friends and families do the same.”
The Democratic convention was one of the first major public steps in a campaign that described more than a dozen Democratic operatives in interviews, which will run the party tens of millions of dollars and become the main focus of the coronavirus campaign.
“The best strategy to prevent Trump from doing unjustified damage to the election results is to win in a landslide, so we do everything we can to help people vote, vote early and reduce that. election rate for voting, “said Ben Wikler, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party.
‘It takes more time’
Coronavirus has the Democratic Party’s voter contact program, one operative said, in little more than a technical support operation than a traditional door-knocking effort. For the spring elections in Wisconsin earlier this year, for example, Wikler put together a problem-solving team to guide voters through the mail-in polling station application, including how to upload a required photo.
Voting by mail is an unknown process for many Americans. And while speeches and videos with Michelle Obama’s likes will help raise awareness about voting in November and get people to make plans, many will also need more contact and help from campaigns than if they would vote in person.
“When you teach your audience to do something they are not familiar with, like voting by mail, it takes more time and it takes more touch,” said Tatenda Musapatike, senior campaign director at ACRONYM, a digitally-focused Democratic group. that it conducts an eight-digit campaign to register and mobilize voters in eight battlefield states. “More approach means more money.”
With the knocking on the Democratic side during the pandemic, it is also increasingly pushing voter contact into the digital sphere. Sean Eldridge, the founder of the Stand Up America group, said peer-to-peer texting would play an “unusual” role in these elections, and his organization is trying to reach millions of voters with both volunteers and voters. fixed Home.
The Biden campaign and the DNC say their efforts are already good and they have already reached millions of voters in battlefield states to support Democrats to now apply for their e-mail ballots. Priorities USA, the Democratic super PAC, spends $ 24 million on voter mobilization, including voice-over-post training. Fair Fight, a group founded by Stacey Abrams, has rolled out voter protection programs in 17 states.
“Voice by mail just moves the timeline up. States enter normally [get-out-the-vote mode] a few days before the election, but now in almost every state in the country we are moving this timeline up incredibly fast and it is getting closer, “said Jenn Ridder, director of the nation states of Biden.
While party leaders spend much of the spring and summer sending postal votes as a security measure amid coronavirus, Democratic operatives almost unanimously insist that postal voting should not be considered the only option for voters. Campaigns should make it clear that voters can still vote in person, they said, whether on election day or in early voting.
“I’m worried about some of the push-per-post push, in that we’re now taking voters with 15 years of voting X-way and we encourage them to vote Y,” said Steve Schale, a Florida-based Democratic strategist working with Unite the Country, a pro-Biden super PAC. “We need to help people vote in the way they are most comfortable with voting. Nor should we force them to vote by vote.”
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s recent attacks on the USPS and in post-voting, voter turnout has increased, operators say.
“We have seen such an increase in young people in terms of concerns about their ballot box,” said Jared DeLoof, the state director of NextGen America, which targets younger voters. “They want to vote, they want to make sure that vote will count.”
This means a greater emphasis than usual on following up after placing a vote in the post. If a voter votes early, that usually marks the end of campaign efforts to reach them. “I always say if you want to stop getting phone calls from the campaign, vote,” Knight joked.
But this year, Democrats believe they should also follow up with some voters after their vote is cast, in an effort to help them fix polls that have been rejected for technical reasons. State rules vary widely as to whether or how voters can correct their turnout, and the time windows for doing so may be short.
Change the rules
While Democratic campaigns and groups are navigating the patchwork of state rules for sending mail messages to encourage turnout, Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias is trying to change many of those rules.
This is the other half of the party’s vote-by-post effort: a sprawling legal effort that spans every fighting state and costs tens of millions of dollars. Priorities USA, just one of Elias’ clients, has expanded its voting statement budget to $ 32 million.
“One of the features of voting by mail is that between the point at which the voter casts the vote and the point at which the vote is counted, several things just have to go right,” Elias said in an interview. “One is that the vote must be received in time by the election officials. … And the second is that the vote must be verified and accepted. ”
Elias, who was the chief lawyer in the earlier sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) 2008 victory and the attorney general for Hillary Clinton and John Kerry’s presidential campaigns, strives for what he calls “four pillars” of legal changes to election laws during coronavirus. The first, that emails should include paid postage, has some cross-partisan support.
The other three did not, and joined Elias in a wide-ranging legal battle with Republicans across the country, including the Republican National Committee and his legal budget of at least $ 20 million. Those fights are about Elias’ push for mandate that allows counting votes per postmark by election day but received after the fact; revision of corresponding laws for signature, which Elias makes behind as based on pseudosciences; and allowing third parties to collect and submit the ballot polls by voters, which Democrats call “community rallies” and Republicans for the most part decipher as “vote of vote.”
‘One thing you do is make sure that people whose vote is challenged on the basis of signature signings, that the people who do that are educated, apply uniform non-discriminatory norms. And the most important thing is that the voter is notified and has a chance to heal, ”said Elias about his legal strategy. (A healing process requires that a state make contact with voters whose votes have been rejected to give them the opportunity to fix their vote – or cure it.)
Several democratically backed lawsuits have also called for expanding who can cast absent votes. In 44 states, each voter can request at least one absent vote if they so choose, and in some states those requirements have changed in response to the pandemic.
The RNC has cut out a section on them website highlighting their legal strategy to attack Elijah. Generally, National Republicans believe that ballots should be received by nearby elections on election day, they are pushing for a complete ban on third-party ballots and are advocating instead of “preserved and improved” voting measures such as signature and photo ID.
“Republicans want to make sure every valid vote is counted,” said Mandi Merritt, a spokeswoman for RNC. “But we believe Democrats are using the forefront of a public health emergency to seek out these long-sought election changes that fit their agenda.”
The case log is long: Elias’ website follows active cases he has been involved in 17 different states, including virtually every state of the battlefield, with clients spanning their ranges from federal and state commissions for Democratic parties to priorities and unions. And other legal acts of voting rights groups such as the Common Cause and the NAACP Legal Fund, apart from Elias’ work, have dealt with accepting votes based on the postmark date to scratch requirements of witnesses and voter ID laws in light of the pandemic over the map.
Meanwhile, Republicans have been involved in dozens of packages, interventions to try to block signature requests (or cancellations) of signatures, and third-party ballots. In some states, the GOP is trying to reverse changes that have been made in response to the pandemic, such as blocking New Jersey’s universal mail system or challenging dropboxes in Pennsylvania.
“The RNC is fighting back to ensure that these laws on the book are defended, upheld and that electoral integrity is protected,” Merritt said.
Republicans claim that allowing outside parties to collect and deliver ballots can lead to coercion or fraud. The results of a disputed House House race in North Carolina were handed out last year, after a Republican operative allegedly collected ballots in the district, which is against state law, and in some cases marked the votes.
The Wisconsin spring elections illustrate how important the deadline for receiving votes can be. Ballots postmarked by the date of the April elections were finally counted, after repeated legal wrangling in the early weeks of the pandemic resulted in a shifting patchwork of rules. That resulted in an additional 79,000 votes become valid that would not have been under normal rules. Wisconsin is back to its regular rules for November, which require ballot papers to be received by election day, but Elias is repealing the law.
And in response to a Elias case, Pennsylvania Democratic Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar recently asked courts to rule that the battlefield must be a postmarked state, cited concerns that the Postal Service is currently unable to deliver ballots.
And while many lawsuits are pending right now, they could just be the beginning.
Depending on how close the races for the White House and the Senate field plate are, “we could drive to a Bush v. Gore situation in any state of the battlefield, depending on how close the results are, said one conservative legal expert, who was granted anonymity to speak freely.
‘At the end of the day, as Donald Trump and the Republicans commit to attacking fair and free democratic elections, it’s the job of federal and state law to step in, exercise their judicial independence, and the protect the rights of citizens to vote, ”said Elias, noting that it is“ too early to tell the path of future legal action ”.
