President Donald Trump Tuesday evening attacked voting by mail — a solution many rights advocates argue is particularly necessary amid the ongoing public health crisis — as a “terrible thing” even after admitting that he cast a mail-in ballot in the 2020 Republican presidential primary in Florida (presumably for himself) just last month.
“Mail-in voting is horrible. It’s corrupt,” Trump said during a Coronavirus Task Force press briefing. “Sure I can vote by mail… because I’m allowed to.”
“Well that’s called out-of-state,” Trump continued, attempting to justify what observers denounced as a glaringly hypocritical position. “You know why I voted? Because I happened to be in the White House and I won’t be able to go to Florida and vote.”
The president proceeded to suggest, without evidence, that mail-in voting is riddled with fraud and abuse. “You get thousands and thousands of people sitting in someone’s living room signing ballots all over the place,” Trump said. “No, I think that mail-in voting is a terrible thing.”
Trump added vaguely that “even the concept of early voting is not the greatest, because a lot of things happen.”
Watch:
President Trump: "I think mail-in voting is horrible, it's corrupt."
Reporter: "You voted by mail in Florida's election last month, didn't you?"
Trump: "Sure. I can vote by mail"
Reporter: "How do you reconcile with that?"
Trump: "Because I'm allowed to." pic.twitter.com/Es8ZNyB3O1
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) April 7, 2020
Sean Eldridge, founder and president of advocacy group Stand Up America, said in a statement late Monday that “Trump’s baseless attacks on vote-by-mail are a pathetic attempt to suppress the vote in the middle of a national crisis.”
“He is demanding that voters choose between protecting their health and participating in our democracy,” said Eldridge. “Expanding access to the ballot through mail-in voting should not be a partisan issue, yet Trump and his cronies are trafficking in debunked conspiracy theories to undermine efforts to ensure every eligible voter can cast their ballot this fall. Trump’s lies are especially dangerous after today’s catastrophic election in Wisconsin.”
I waited 2.5 hours today in rain and hail (and a mask and gloves) to vote in Milwaukee because @wisgop and @scotus would rather risk lives than have a fair election. Instead of 182 polling sites, we had 5. #VoterSuppression #WisconsinPrimary pic.twitter.com/9F8xKwciOX
— Trudy Harwood (@TrudyandPierre) April 8, 2020
Tuesday’s press briefing was not the first time Trump has attacked mail-in voting. Last month, as Common Dreams reported, Trump said in an interview on “Fox & Friends” that “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again” if mail-in voting and other voting expansion proposals were to be implemented on a national scale.
Jhacova Williams and Kayla Blado of the Economic Policy Institute wrote in a blog post Tuesday that Wisconsin’s elections “highlighted that Americans need more options to vote.”
“One promising method is a vote-by-mail system,” wrote Williams and Blado. “Five states — Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, and Utah — already conduct their elections through mail… It’s time for state elections to practice what their own health departments preach: stay home.”
Fred Wertheimer, president of advocacy group Democracy 21, urged Congress to act urgently to ensure that mail-in voting is available nationwide by November.
“Trump’s continuing efforts to rig the November election, in this case by suppressing the sacred right to vote, must be defeated,” Wertheimer said in a statement. “Every eligible voter must have a safe and secure opportunity to vote in November. In order to accomplish this, it is essential for Congress to provide the states with additional funding of at least $1.6 billion in the next relief bill, which is necessary to ensure that fair and honest elections occur in November, unrigged by President Trump and his allies.”
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.