Trump threatens funding over voting by mail
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Wednesday threatened to hold up federal funds for two battleground states because they are trying to make it easier to vote during the coronavirus pandemic.
The president’s tweets targeting Michigan and Nevada were his latest salvo against voting by mail, a practice that he has publicly worried will lead so many people to vote that Republicans will lose in November.
Trump began by targeting Michigan, erroneously describing Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s announcement Tuesday that she would send absentee ballot applications to every voter in the state.
“Michigan sends absentee ballots to 7.7 million people ahead of Primaries and the General Election,” Trump tweeted Wednesday. “This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this Voter Fraud path!”
Trump later made a similar threat against Nevada, which has actually sent ballots to voters for its June 9 state primary, due to the coronavirus pandemic. A federal judge recently cleared Nevada’s decision to mail ballots, which were sent by the Republican secretary of state.
“State of Nevada ‘thinks’ that they can send out illegal vote by mail ballots, creating a great Voter Fraud scenario for the State and the U.S. They can’t! If they do, ‘I think’ I can hold up funds to the State. Sorry, but you must not cheat in elections,” Trump tweeted.
It was not immediately clear what funds Trump was referencing. The states are paying for their elections changes through coronavirus relief spending measures the president signed into law. Trump tagged his acting budget director, his chief of staff and the Treasury Department on the tweets.
Trump has been vocal about his opposition to voting by mail, claiming the practice is ripe for fraud although there is scant evidence of widespread wrongdoing with mailin voting. Trump himself requested a mail ballot for Florida’s GOP primary last month and he has voted absentee in previous elections.
On Monday, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel portrayed the party’s $20 million campaign against Democratic efforts to expand mail voting as a principled stance to protect the sanctity of the ballot.
Trump’s attacks on mail voting have come largely in states with little history of large numbers of people casting absentee ballots. But he has not addressed mail voting in states where it has long been popular, such as Florida and Arizona, and often used to great success by Republican campaigns. Nor has Trump denigrated mail voting in the five states — Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington — that conduct elections entirely by mail.