As someone who closely monitored Donald Trump’s campaign against voting by mail in 2020, I am discouraged but not surprised to report that Republican state legislators are now reversing the kinds of access to mail ballots they use to support, as I explained at New York:
Donald Trump’s relentless attacks on voting by mail throughout the 2020 presidential-election cycle were clearly designed to set up a bogus election contest by creating a partisan gap in voting methods, an early Republican lead on Election Night, and a host of empty but redundant claims of voter fraud. But while his effort to reverse the election results failed, his determination to restrict the franchise live on wherever Republicans control the state legislature. According to the Brennan Center for Justice,
“Thirty-three states have introduced, prefiled, or carried over 165 bills to restrict voting access. These proposals primarily seek to: (1) limit mail voting access; (2) impose stricter voter ID requirements; (3) slash voter registration opportunities; and (4) enable more aggressive voter roll purges. These bills are an unmistakable response to the unfounded and dangerous lies about fraud that followed the 2020 election.”
While voter-ID requirements, tougher voter-registration procedures, and aggressive voter-roll purges are perennial Republican “ideas” in this era of adverse demographic trends for the GOP, the attack on voting by mail is actually rather new. The big bipartisan trend prior to 2020 was toward liberalized voting by mail, a convenience measure favored in some states by Republicans in particular (most notably in the all-mail-voting jurisdiction of Utah but also in states, such as Florida, with histories of heavy no-excuse absentee voting). All in all, 34 states entered 2020 allowing any registered voter to cast a mail ballot without an excuse, including the battleground states of Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Notably, Republicans controlled the legislatures in all of these states other than Maine.
While Pennsylvania’s Republican legislature approved no-excuse voting by mail in 2019, as Michigan voters had before them in a 2018 ballot initiative, some of the states now looking at mail-ballot restrictions haven’t had them in a long time. Florida’s GOP governor and legislature introduced no-excuse absentee ballots in 2002, as did Georgia’s in 2005. In Arizona, such ballots were first permitted in 1991. Thanks to Trump, there are now strong Republican efforts under way to restrict eligibility in all these states.
The most blatant of them may be in Georgia, where Trump-generated hostility toward voting by mail has been augmented by a flank-covering maneuver from Trump nemesis Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state, who refused to “find” the 45th president enough votes to overturn Joe Biden’s Georgia victory. Raffensperger, who had already annoyed the White House by proactively sending mail ballots to voters qualified for the 2020 primaries, now backs new excuse requirements and redundant voter-ID rules. Legislation is currently moving in both chambers of the Georgia legislature to accomplish these and other “reforms.” The chief state-senate bill would restrict voting by mail to people who (a) are over 75, (b) have a disability, or (c) are physically absent from the voting jurisdiction on Election Day.
Republicans are promoting a subtler effort to undermine access to mail ballots in Florida. Until now, Florida, like a number of other states, allowed people to register in advance to vote by mail for multiple elections (under current law, someone registering to vote by mail in 202a could continue to do so through 2024). Republican-sponsored legislation would require reregistration for every election cycle.
Particulars aside, these developments show a depressing retreat by Republicans from “convenience voting” measures that, before Trump started attacking them, were considered at least as friendly to Republican voters as to Democrats. The countertrend parallels and reinforces the more general GOP retreat from the very concept of voting as a right rather than a privilege, with the privileged having a thumb on the scales. And it underlines the urgency of federal voting-rights legislation to create a level playing field.
Kerry will win by three. Now feel free to rest. 🙂
Well, you can try some of the meta-analysis sites out there. These analyze a bunch of polls through various means and try to estimate the outcome. I think you’ll be pleased with the results:
http://synapse.princeton.edu/~sam/pollcalc.html
http://binomial.csuhayward.edu/WeeklyStatus.html
http://arrowheadengineering.com/
http://www.econ.umn.edu/~amoro/Research/presprobs.html
based on all the polls and interperetations of the polls and increase in voter reg and GOTV efforts and %blacks for kerry and % cuban americans for bush….i was just wondering when someone will tell me how much kerry will win by.
frankly i am exhasuted and would like to take a long rest….any convincing predictions out there?
This is their online poll, and it should be noted that this results differs markedly from the telephone poll released just a few days ago. In the poll, using the same definition of likely voters, Bush was up 8 points. (With the less stringest definition, Bush was up 2 points). This is a big swing of 9 points, but one was telephone, one was internet.
Personally, I have more faith in their Internet polls.
chris matthews said today kerry had the wind at his back and if the wind is still blowing in kerry’s direction tomorow(thursday) kerry will win.
chris matthew called the election for bush exactly 7 days ago.
larry o’donnel spent 10 solid minutes calling swift boat john o’neil a “liar” on scarbourgh 2 nights ago.
not “misleading’ …he called him a “lair” about 37 times , and very loudly. hats off to o’donnel.
You wonder whether Bush in fact has superfluous solid red support, and whether the non-solid-red polls, which really matter, might show 2% more for Kerry.
Isn’t this LV definition the same one that gave Bush a 51-43 edge in the October 14-17 Harris Poll?
Whether this reflects a real shift or just the LV definition working better closer to the election is another question.
I think the BUSH trend is “YOU”RE FIRED.” I was out cnvassing for MOVE ON last night. I called in TEN strong Kerry Edwards voters for ten stops. These were all voters that were not likely to be sampled by any major polling system. There is a vast undercurrent of anger towards the current administration which I think is starting to head towards a crest.
With such a robust sample, you can see that Bush’s MoE puts his ceiling at 49%. His ceiling, mind you.
It does seem that Kerry is breaking a hair ahead in national horse races.
The Harris Poll is the most encouraging poll yet. Last week they ran the poll and offered two different LV scenarios – one with those who will definitely vote AND voted in 2000, and the other with those who will definitely vote but did NOT vote in 2000 (and were old enough). In the second scenario, without 2000 voters, Kerry trailed Bush by 2 (48-46). In the first scenario that excludes new voters Kerry trailed by 8 (51-43). However, in the Harris Poll just released, the LV model resembles the first scenario of the last poll. In other words, Kerry didn’t just increase from -2 to +1, he moved from -8 to +1! That is incredible, if it is true, and shows a huge closing among undecideds for Kerry. I can only imagine what the number is for the second scenario voters now.
Notice how the WSJ headline writers just can’t bring themselves to say that it’s Kerry who is ahead in the latest Harris poll. You have to read to the end of the second paragraph to get that info. Compare that with some recent headlines characterizing Bush’s 1-pt leads as “surges” or “grabs”. I know, it’s no called the SCLM for nothing.
Harris seems to be something that slips under the radar, but from what I’ve heard they’re pretty good.
a trend seems to be emerging, and it’s not good news for George Bush.
Harris is underrepresenting new voters. Their likely voter screen:
“Likely Voters are defined as adults who are registered to vote and say they are “absolutely certain” to vote and, if they were old enough, voted in 2000.”
So if you didn’t vote in 2000 (unregistered, unmotivated) you don’t get counted. I think this poll is even better for Kerry than it seems on the surface.
Is it wishful thinking, or am I detecting a trend here? Kerry is up in the following: Democracy Corps 2 pts, LA Times up 1 pt, Harris 1 pt, and ABC News/Washingto Post 2 pts. Gallop has Bush ahead by only 4 which, if their internals have the same problems, is probably a dead heat. I suspect (and hope) that Kerry is doing his famous closing, and I think the 380 tonnes of missing explosives will galvanize the fence-sitter into KE direction.