For Donald Trump to defy the odds again, his supporters can't fear mail-in voting
As the presidential race heads into the home stretch, President Donald Trump is learning the hard way that maligning mail-in voting is a dangerous and dubious strategy. The president has called voting by mail in 2020 “the greatest scam in the history of politics” and warned that it will be rife with fraud, yet it remains a critical option for at least 77% of American voters — especially Trump’s elderly and rural base during the pandemic. If the Republican Party doesn’t fix this soon, it will spell disaster for their candidates up and down the ballot.
In Florida, where mail ballots are to start being sent out Thursday, over 700,000 more Democrats have requested mail ballots than Republicans, a sharp departure from 2016 and 2018, when Republicans turned out tens of thousands more votes by mail than Democrats.
The same trend is manifesting in polls nationwide and across other critical swing states.
A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 78% of Trump’s backers agree with his argument about mail-in voting, while only 28% of Biden’s supporters do. In North Carolina, the first state to mail out ballots, Democrats requested more than 337,000 ballots as of Sept. 4 and independents 200,000, while Republicans sought only 103,000. In Wisconsin, a Marquette University Law School poll found that 55% of Democrats said they planned to vote by mail compared with only 15% of Republicans.
Trump supporters on edge
While data points matter, the real evidence comes from talking to voters on the front lines. I spent the past few weeks in my home state of Wisconsin with voters in this key battleground state.
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One of my takeaways was just how much energy and momentum Trump has on the ground — a reminder that Washington should never count him out. But my other takeaway is that he is undermining his own success by leaving voters confused and mistrustful of the electoral process. One voter I spoke with (in a social distancing manner) was an elderly Trump voter who said she would have preferred to vote by mail were it not for the president’s warnings that her ballot would be discarded or altered. When I asked whether she would vote in person, she expressed hesitation due to COVID-19.
The irony is painful. By playing up fears of fraud, Trump is essentially telling his supporters not to vote.
The president’s strategy is particularly dangerous in Florida, where I’ve served as a consultant to the state Republican Party.
Florida: must-win battleground
Florida is a must-win battleground with a large elderly population and razor-thin political margins. Both Republicans and Democrats in the state have supported a “no excuse” mail-in voting policy, whereby anyone can request an absentee ballot.
State GOP officials are left baffled by the president’s dissuading of the practice given that they have fared better than Democrats in mail ballots. In the last presidential election, 58,244 more Republicans voted by mail than Democrats. In a year when it counts the most, the party’s voters are told that the system is a recipe for fraud.
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Now don't get me wrong, Republicans and Democrats alike have a right to be wary of election fraud and to demand security measures for mail-in voting. Leaders from both political parties must address any security weaknesses in order to maintain confidence in the democratic process.
Even so, if President Trump and the Republican Party want a shot at victory in a year when voting in person is perceived to be simply too fraught with health risks, particularly for their base of older voters, they need to embrace voting by mail. Any other strategy is self-sabotage.
Whether you agree with him or not, Trump has a unique ability to defy the odds. If he can change his tune and embrace mail-in voting, he could very well shock Washington again and call The White House, not Trump Tower or Mar-a-Lago, his primary residence for another four years.
This election will be historic for more reasons than we can count, including that for the first time in our nation’s history, the race will likely not be decided on Election Day or at polling locations. It will be decided at kitchen tables all across America — starting now.
Matt Terrill is a partner at Firehouse Strategies and served as the chief of staff on Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's 2016 presidential campaign.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump, change your tune on mail-in voting fast, or lose swing states
