The Latest On Republican Efforts To Make It Harder To Vote
About a month ago, we laid out five ways that Republicans are making it harder to vote and more generally undermining the electoral process in 2020. We focused on Republicans for two reasons. First, making it harder to vote is a more controversial and anti-democratic goal than making it easier to vote, as Democrats are aiming to do. And second, President Trump is playing a central role in these voting wars. Trump has publicly said that he is opposed to efforts in many states to make absentee voting and voting by mail (the two are functionally the same thing) available to virtually anyone who wants to vote that way. He has also suggested that higher overall voter turnout would make it harder for Republicans to win elections.
Over the last month, with the election approaching, Republican officials — from county-level election administrators to the president himself — have in some ways escalated their use of these tactics. So here’s an update on those efforts to complicate the voting process and oppose moves that would make it easier. These five categories, which we used in the last article, are generally ordered from least alarming to most alarming. (There is no formal system tracking every lawsuit concerning voting and the electoral process in all 50 states, so this article is based on our informal tracking, which means we might have missed a key development in a state or two.) Here’s what’s happening:
1. Opposing changes to make it easier to vote amid COVID-19
Opposing or limiting the use of ballot drop boxes. Recent U.S. Postal Service changes enacted by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a GOP megadonor, have slowed down mail delivery and likely increased the potential that some mail-in ballots will get to elections offices too late to be counted. (In most states, mail-in ballots must be received by Election Day.)
In response, to make sure that people don’t have to vote in person and to ensure that their ballots are received in time, Democrats have been pushing states and localities to expand the number of secure boxes where people can drop off their ballots so they can be picked up later by election officials. Republicans, though, are also opposing these drop boxes. In Ohio, the Republican secretary of state is blocking any county from having more than one ballot drop-off location — even though it would obviously make sense for counties with larger populations to have more than one. In Iowa, the Republican secretary of state is allowing such boxes only at government-owned buildings (as opposed to, say, outside grocery stores). Missouri, another GOP-dominated state, is barring the use of any drop boxes.
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https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-latest-on-republican-efforts-to-make-it-harder-to-vote/