GOP: Trump attacks could backfire
President Donald Trump’s unfounded attacks on mail balloting are discouraging his own supporters from embracing the practice, according to polls and Republican leaders across the country, prompting growing alarm that one of the central strategies of his re-election campaign is actually threatening GOP prospects in November.
Multiple public surveys show a growing divide between Democrats and Republicans about the security of voting by mail, with Republicans saying they are far less likely to trust it in November.
In addition, party leaders in several states said they are encountering resistance among GOP voters who are being encouraged to vote absentee while also seeing the president describe mail voting as “rigged” and
“fraudulent.”
As a result, state and local Republicans across the country fear they are falling dramatically behind in a practice that is expected to be key to voter turnout this year.
“It is a problem,” said one Republican strategist in North Carolina. “The president has oversimplified the issue to criticize the method of voting, rather than the way it’s done. The details matter.”
At least 77% of American voters will be able to vote through the mail in the fall, according to a Washington Post tracker of state rules.
Just Sunday, Nevada lawmakers passed a bill that would add that state to the growing list that will mail active voters ballots ahead of the November election.
Mr. Trump called the bill’s passage “an illegal late night coup” in a tweet Monday morning. His tweet spotlights the fight that his campaign and the RNC are putting up against the expansion of mail balloting.
They are seeking to stop efforts backed by Democrats and voting rights advocates to loosen rules that would make it easier for people to vote by mail. GOP party officials argue that such restrictions are necessary to prevent fraud.
The president has gone much further, however, launching wholesale broadsides against the whole concept of voting by mail that have emerged as a central strategy of his campaign.
Senior Trump advisers, including RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, have warned the president that his broad rhetoric is complicating Republican turnout efforts, multiple strategists said.
Mr. Trump has indicated that he has no plans to back off his attacks on the integrity of the vote, strategists said.
“He tweets about this every day,” said a campaign adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal thinking. “Clearly, it’s his concerted strategy.”
Meanwhile, there are now growing signs of a palpable impact on GOP enthusiasm for mail voting.
A Monmouth University poll of registered voters in Georgia taken late last month found that 60% of Democrats are at least somewhat likely to vote by mail this fall, compared to 28% of Republicans.
Glen Bolger, a pollster with the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies, said that in one swing state he declined to identify, only 15% of voters planning to cast ballots by mail were Trump supporters.
“Republicans are skeptical about voting by mail, and that’s a problem up and down the ballot,” he said.