President Trump throw a vote-by-mail ballot in Florida this week after weeks of questioning the safety of this method of voting
President Trump throw a vote-by-mail ballot in Florida this week after weeks of questioning the safety of this method of voting, and in doing so he returned it to election officials employing a technique many Republicans state should be illegal.
How Trump voted reveals how he's had to walk a fine line, and frequently tweak his speech about voting, to adjust for political realities and his own behavior.
Trump submitted the Florida primary ballot by giving it to a third party to return, a spokesperson for the Palm Beach elections supervisor confirmed to NPR on Wednesday. Republicans often derisively refer to sending at a ballot this way as"ballot harvesting," and it is something Trump has criticized.
House Republicans lately introduced a bill to force countries (that are usually allowed to establish their own rules around voting) to make the practice of turning in a nonfamily member's ballot illegal.
Democrats, who often refer to the practice as"neighborhood ballot group," mainly see it as useful for vulnerable people -- one individual turning in all the ballots for a nursing home or housing complex, for instance. They're suing to allow it in many of nations as part of a legal struggle to make voting rules more elastic across the nation in response to this pandemic.
Voting specialists are divided about third parties returning ballots.
Some administrators assert that in case an elections office supplies things which make returning a ballot simpler like prepaid ballot postage and ballot drop boxes, then third-party ballot collection should not be banned. Other people assert that it is just and reasonable to set a limit on the number of ballots one person can turn in, as most states do.
The most significant case of election fraud recently U.S. history happened during the 2018 midterm elections and included third party ballot collection. A GOP operative illegally collected and potentially tampered with ballots in a U.S. House race in North Carolina, finally leading state governments to overturn the election results.
Amid fears of slowed-down email service, Trump's usage of a third party to turn in his ballot will surely be used by Democrats, who point out that the practice permits voters to avoid using the email for ballot return but can nonetheless be convenient and protected sometimes.
"Donald Trump votes by mail but does not need you to. When it's good enough for him, it's good enough for us," tweeted Kamala Harris, the Democrats' vice presidential nominee, last week.
More broadly, it's another illustration of Trump or someone in his orbit by means of a ballot they received in the mail; The Washington Post counted 16 such instances in an article this summer. The American Civil Liberties Union launched an advertisement campaign Wednesday highlighting how Trump and members of the administration have voted by email while combating attempts to expand the clinic to others.
Changing approaches
In the earlier days of this pandemic, the Trump administration sought to push back against all expansions of voting by email, asserting that individuals should need an excuse to vote using a paper or absentee ballot.
"I believe there's a variety of concerns about mail-in ballots," Attorney General William Barr stated in an interview with NPR in June. "I'm not talking about a mail-in ballot for a limited number of instances in which someone, you understand, is going to be traveling across the world, and the manner that the nation has provided for that is, you mail in your ballot."
But Florida, where Trump cast a ballot this week, describes its method as a"vote-by-mail" system, and it has not required a justification for anyone to vote that way for nearly 20 decades. Republicans there have depended on mail votes against the older, whiter regions of the electorate, and whose email ballots have traditionally been accepted at greater rates compared to nonwhite voters.
However, this year differs, perhaps because of Trump's rhetoric around voting, University of Florida political science professor Michael McDonald said.
"The amounts in Florida are eye-popping," McDonald said. "We've got at this point in time, enrolled Democrats outpacing the registered Republicans in mail ballot requests by over 660,000 ballot requests"
North Carolina, another battleground state, reveals a similar story, with registered Democrats asking triple the number of mail ballots which Republicans have.
Trump has tried to reverse course over the past month, stating that Republicans should feel confident voting with the mail in both states. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said this week which Trump just has an issue with the handful of countries which are proactively sending ballots to all registered voters without first making them petition the ballots.
New Jersey became the latest state to declare it would email ballots to all registered voters, quickly drawing a lawsuit in the Trump effort Tuesday night.
"The differentiation Trump is drawing between absentee balloting and'universal mail-ins' in regard to the potential for fraud is foolish," tweeted Rick Hasen, a political science professor at the University of California, Irvine.
Plus it's also unclear when the message is getting through to Republican voters. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll out this week found that 11 percent of Trump's supporters plan to vote mail this autumn.
How Trump voted reveals how he's had to walk a fine line, and frequently tweak his speech about voting, to adjust for political realities and his own behavior.
Trump submitted the Florida primary ballot by giving it to a third party to return, a spokesperson for the Palm Beach elections supervisor confirmed to NPR on Wednesday. Republicans often derisively refer to sending at a ballot this way as"ballot harvesting," and it is something Trump has criticized.
House Republicans lately introduced a bill to force countries (that are usually allowed to establish their own rules around voting) to make the practice of turning in a nonfamily member's ballot illegal.
Democrats, who often refer to the practice as"neighborhood ballot group," mainly see it as useful for vulnerable people -- one individual turning in all the ballots for a nursing home or housing complex, for instance. They're suing to allow it in many of nations as part of a legal struggle to make voting rules more elastic across the nation in response to this pandemic.
Voting specialists are divided about third parties returning ballots.
Some administrators assert that in case an elections office supplies things which make returning a ballot simpler like prepaid ballot postage and ballot drop boxes, then third-party ballot collection should not be banned. Other people assert that it is just and reasonable to set a limit on the number of ballots one person can turn in, as most states do.
The most significant case of election fraud recently U.S. history happened during the 2018 midterm elections and included third party ballot collection. A GOP operative illegally collected and potentially tampered with ballots in a U.S. House race in North Carolina, finally leading state governments to overturn the election results.
Amid fears of slowed-down email service, Trump's usage of a third party to turn in his ballot will surely be used by Democrats, who point out that the practice permits voters to avoid using the email for ballot return but can nonetheless be convenient and protected sometimes.
"Donald Trump votes by mail but does not need you to. When it's good enough for him, it's good enough for us," tweeted Kamala Harris, the Democrats' vice presidential nominee, last week.
More broadly, it's another illustration of Trump or someone in his orbit by means of a ballot they received in the mail; The Washington Post counted 16 such instances in an article this summer. The American Civil Liberties Union launched an advertisement campaign Wednesday highlighting how Trump and members of the administration have voted by email while combating attempts to expand the clinic to others.
Changing approaches
In the earlier days of this pandemic, the Trump administration sought to push back against all expansions of voting by email, asserting that individuals should need an excuse to vote using a paper or absentee ballot.
"I believe there's a variety of concerns about mail-in ballots," Attorney General William Barr stated in an interview with NPR in June. "I'm not talking about a mail-in ballot for a limited number of instances in which someone, you understand, is going to be traveling across the world, and the manner that the nation has provided for that is, you mail in your ballot."
But Florida, where Trump cast a ballot this week, describes its method as a"vote-by-mail" system, and it has not required a justification for anyone to vote that way for nearly 20 decades. Republicans there have depended on mail votes against the older, whiter regions of the electorate, and whose email ballots have traditionally been accepted at greater rates compared to nonwhite voters.
However, this year differs, perhaps because of Trump's rhetoric around voting, University of Florida political science professor Michael McDonald said.
"The amounts in Florida are eye-popping," McDonald said. "We've got at this point in time, enrolled Democrats outpacing the registered Republicans in mail ballot requests by over 660,000 ballot requests"
North Carolina, another battleground state, reveals a similar story, with registered Democrats asking triple the number of mail ballots which Republicans have.
Trump has tried to reverse course over the past month, stating that Republicans should feel confident voting with the mail in both states. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said this week which Trump just has an issue with the handful of countries which are proactively sending ballots to all registered voters without first making them petition the ballots.
New Jersey became the latest state to declare it would email ballots to all registered voters, quickly drawing a lawsuit in the Trump effort Tuesday night.
"The differentiation Trump is drawing between absentee balloting and'universal mail-ins' in regard to the potential for fraud is foolish," tweeted Rick Hasen, a political science professor at the University of California, Irvine.
Plus it's also unclear when the message is getting through to Republican voters. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll out this week found that 11 percent of Trump's supporters plan to vote mail this autumn.