Trump’s attacks on mail voting are turning Republicans off absentee ballots - The Washington Post

President Trump’s relentless attacks on the security of mail voting are driving suspicion among GOP voters toward absentee ballots — a dynamic alarming Republican strategists, who say it could undercut their own candidates, including Trump himself.

In several primaries this spring, Democratic voters have embraced mail ballots in far larger numbers than Republicans during a campaign season defined by the coronavirus pandemic.

And when they urge their supporters to vote by mail, GOP campaigns around the country are hearing from more and more Republican voters who say they do not trust absentee ballots, according to multiple strategists.

In one particularly vivid example, a group of Michigan voters held a public burning of their absentee ballot applications last month.

The growing Republican antagonism toward voting by mail comes even as the Trump campaign is launching a major absentee-ballot program in every competitive state, according to multiple campaign advisers — a delicate balancing act, considering what one strategist described as the president’s “imprecision” on the subject.

Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said the president is critical of universal mail balloting, not the kind of absentee voting available to only a narrow group of qualified voters, such as older voters or those out of the country on Election Day.

Any voter is allowed to cast a ballot by mail.

Justin Clark, a senior Trump campaign adviser, said “people don’t give voters enough credit,” saying they are able to separate what the president is saying about absentee ballots vs.

The campaign has launched what another adviser, Chris Carr, called an “aggressive” effort to get voters to cast ballots by mail, including direct contacts with those who have voted absentee in the past and a successful test run in a recent California election.

In Virginia, 118,000 voters applied for absentee ballots for Democratic primaries June 23, while only 59,000 voters did so for the Republican primary — even though Republicans voted in a statewide Senate primary contest, while Sen.

Mail voting also soared in Kentucky’s June 23 primary; only about 10 percent of Democratic votes were cast on the day of the election, while 20 percent of GOP votes were.

Similarly, in Georgia’s June 9 primaries, about 600,000 voters cast mail ballots in Democratic primaries, while about 524,000 did so in Republican contests, according to the Georgia secretary of state’s office.

According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll in late May, a sharp partisan divide has emerged over whether to make it easier for people to cast an absentee ballot, with 87 percent of Democrats and 33 percent of Republicans saying it should be easier.

Democratic and Republican campaigns alike have long sought to “bank” votes before Election Day — amassing as many votes as early as possible, whether at early-voting sites or through absentee ballots.

In Texas, Republican officials have offered a nuanced argument in opposing a Democratic push to allow anyone who fears coronavirus infection to vote absentee, saying the law limiting the practice to those out of the country, with disabilities or 65 and older should remain in place.

Another said “STOP THE MAIL IN BALLOTS.” Yet another described mail balloting as the “easiest way to cheat that I know of with the exception of crooked election judges stuffing the ballot boxes.”.

In perhaps the most dramatic sign of Republican skepticism about mail balloting, the campaign of one Republican senator seeking reelection this year recently sent a text urging roughly 100,000 to apply for absentee ballots — and received hundreds of negative replies, according to a person familiar with the responses.

Top Trump campaign officials and their conservative allies are discussing how to ensure GOP voters are receptive to their efforts to get them to vote absentee in the fall.

Conservative activist and Trump ally Leonard Leo is among those who have argued that Republicans need a “voter education” effort to teach them how to cast their ballots by mail, according to people familiar with his views.

In some states that publish daily lists of the names of voters who have requested absentee ballots — as well as lists of those who have turned their ballots in — the operations can be even more sophisticated, with campaigns able to winnow their list of targeted voters and narrowly focus their resources on the ones who haven’t yet acted.

But even as the campaign works to expand absentee balloting among its supporters, the president’s rhetoric attacking the practice is unlikely to subside, a former senior administration official noted.

Trump regularly rants about voter fraud and mail ballots in the Oval Office, this official said — and will continue to do so until Election Day because “one, he truly believes it, and two, it gives him an out if he loses.”.