Nothing suspicious about mail votes

Call it the trial balloon that launched 1,000 punctures. On Thursday morning President Donald Trump tweeted: “With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”

But it was another Trump tweet on Thursday that caught my attention, one that signaled how he might seek to discredit the results of an election he can’t postpone.

“Must know Election results on the night of the Election, not days, months, or even years later!” Trump tweeted Thursday afternoon.

If you were charitable, you could dismiss Trump’s insistence on same-day results as the cranky impatience of a television addict. But it has a more sinister interpretation: that delayed results are an indication that something fishy is going on, maybe even the manufacturing of votes.

There is nothing legislators or election officials can do to prevent Trump from sowing suspicion about election results, especially if he loses.

But it’s also important that election officials— including Republican secretaries of state— counter Trump’s insinuations by reminding voters that there is nothing sinister about a tabulation that lasts beyond election night, especially in an election in which the coronavirus pandemic has necessitated increased voting by mail.