A setup to political drama

The explosion in virus-driven absentee voting probably means that President Trump will lead in key-state returns on election night and perhaps get overtaken by mail and absentee counts the day or days after.

Large stuff soon may be hitting a fast fan.

Election-day and early-voting tabulations from machines usually get posted first. Absentee tallies come more arduously, perhaps the next day or the day after, especially if they’re heavy, as they most certainly will be— exponentially—this time.

In three key battleground states with 64 electoral votes combined, registered Democrats have requested more absentee ballots than registered Republicans by more than two-to-one.

Democrats generally are more respectful of the virus than Republicans, and Trump has soured Republicans on any form of mail voting.

So, the election-night returns will be dominated by machine counts of the election-day, in-person voting of Republicans, and those returns will flash up on your television screens first. Absentee voting will get counted later and be dominated by Democrats.

If you don’t believe that being overtaken by late-counted mailed ballots would cause Trump to cry fix, then you haven’t been watching that ego or listening to that demagoguery.

If you don’t think Republican lawyers would find some basis for filing lawsuits, then you don’t know Republicans or lawyers.

And now those lawsuits might go to a newly 6-3 Republican U.S. Supreme Court.

This could be the 2000 debacle all over again except worse, with more impassioned combatants, one of them dangerously tin-horn.

And I don’t mean Joe Biden. He merely is meanderingly verbose, hyperbolic and gaffe-prone.

I mean the one who is saying already that mail voting is fine if he wins and fraudulent if he loses.

This specific issue, though, is not statewide mail voting in a few places, but near-universal acceleration at high levels of no-excuse absentee voting, which Trump thus far has defended as credible, mainly because he votes absentee.

But just let the extraordinarily heavy absentee counts start eroding and then overtaking his lead a day or two after Nov. 3. He’ll explain that his own absentee ballot is fine but that all those other millions aren’t.

Consistency is not required or even much a factor in the modern American political arena.

Two days ago, The New York Times published a study on absentee voting. For this purpose, I will focus on three of the six states that will decide this race—Florida with 29 electoral votes, Pennsylvania with 20 and North Carolina with 15. (The others are Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona.)

Trump won them all narrowly in 2016 and they are even more pronounced tossups this time.

Florida reports nearly 4.7 million absentee ballots requested, which is about 30 percent more than the number cast in 2016. Of those 4.7 million requests, 47 percent have come from registered Democrats and 31 percent from registered Republicans.

Pennsylvania … wow. It reports 2.009 million absentee requests so far, which is a mere 1,861 percent more than the number cast in 2016. And 70 percent of those requests this year are from Democrats. Pennsylvania could be a soaring pro-Trump story on the night of Nov. 3 and a soaring Biden-comeback story on the day or days after.

North Carolina reports 949,000 absentee requests, which is 390 percent more than the number cast in 2016. Fifty percent are from registered Democrats. Only 17 percent are from registered Republicans.

None of that much matters in Arkansas, where we don’t have party registration.

But we do have the governor’s executive order allowing any-excuse absentee voting because of the virus. Some counties report tenfold or greater upticks in absentee requests.

Pulaski County Clerk Terri Hollingsworth tells me her office is still at work on a driveby absentee ballot dropoff curbside service on Spring Street beside the county courthouse.

She said Tuesday that the service couldn’t begin until early voting starts Oct. 19, and that, until then, in-person deliveries of absentee ballots would require standing socially distanced on the sidewalk for masked entry into the courthouse.

In the meantime, she said, office personnel will soon start providing sidewalk services to those lined up outside.

Subject to city agreement to the street closing and to the Election Commission having no objection to the service, Hollingsworth intends as of Oct. 19 to place a drop box curbside that would be manned by office personnel who would check IDs and require sign-ins by absentee voters driving by to deliver their ballots.

Many absentee voters uncommonly passionate about this election and wary of the virus and mail-service competence surely would appreciate being able to stay in their cars and watch their absentee ballot get put in the box.