The National Review Joins the Fight Against Mail-In Ballots

There is an editorial currently running on the National Review’s website that begins with the following statement: “There are legitimate issues to consider after the 2020 vote about the security of mail-in ballots and the process of counting votes…”

This is absolutely false.

This is part of the Republican party’s continuing attempts to deliberately misconstrue the safety and security of mail-in ballots, as opposed to absentee ballots,  when, in fact, there are absolutely NO differences between them because they are collected, processed, verified, and counted through the same exact systems.

Mail-in ballots and absentee ballots are two peas from the same pod and, therefore, any editorial that begins with such a statement loses any possible legitimacy because it begins with a lie.

In making the assertion that there are “issues” with mail-in ballots in an editorial criticizing outgoing president Donald Trump attacks on the electoral process is crying shame over precisely the same behavior that The National Review is guilty of: attempting to convince the American voter that there significant differences between mail-in ballots and absentee ballots.

The one and only reason that Republicans oppose mail-in ballots is that mail-in ballots are virtually immune to the voter suppression techniques used by Republicans to manipulate the electoral process.

Challenging voters at the polls on the basis of their physical appearance is IMPOSSIBLE with mail-in ballots.

Closing polling stations in Democratic districts have no effect on mail-in ballots.

Mail-in ballots and absentee ballots are actually intrinsically more secure than in-person voting because:

Tabulators actually have more time and more resources to verify the identity of the voter and the legitimacy of the ballot in question.

With in-person voting, the long lines of impatient citizens waiting to cast their votes make it virtually impossible to accurately verify the identity of the voter or compare signatures on the ballots with specimen signatures to ensure that the person voting is actually entitled to cast that vote.

With in-person voting, corrupt poll workers can easily insert fake ballots directly into the ballot boxes. (Lyndon Johnson actually injected fake ballot boxes filled with fake ballots to ensure that he would win his first successful Senate race.)

Poll Watchers and Poll Challengers (corrected from poll workers) can challenge voters on the basis of perceived physical characteristics that suggest they may be Democratic voters and they could have access to publicly available voter rolls in order to decide which mailed ballots to challenge. Republican governors and legislatures can reduce the hours that the polls are open, and close polling locations in Democratic districts to discourage Democratic voters from casting their ballots. They can physically obstruct voters attempting to cast their ballots in Democratic districts by attempting to intimidate people whose physical characteristics suggest that they are Democratic voters.

All of these things are possible because Republican legislatures have Gerrymandered voting districts in the states they control to create Democratic voter ghettos that facilitate their ability to employ these disruptive techniques against Democratic voters in those districts. (To be fair, Democratic governors and legislatures have done the same things to create Republican voter ghettos in the states they control.)

This is one of the most widespread misunderstandings of Gerrymandering. Everyone understands that Gerrymandering creates “safe” districts for the party that is doing the Gerrymandering. Very few people realize that the real objective of the Gerrymanders is to create districts where they can attack voters who lean the other way and suppress the votes in those districts. The first tactic pays dividends in the form of maintaining the control of the party in power over their state legislatures and their Congressional delegations.

This has been their game plan for more than three decades because it works and, unfortunately for Democracy, Republicans are much better at it than Democrats are because Democrats believe that every citizen is entitled to vote while Republicans do not labor under that constraint which is aptly demonstrated by their continuing attempts to undermine the mail-in voting process.

PS:  The only actual case of voter fraud in the 2020 election was committed by Donald and Melania Trump when they voted – by absentee ballot – using their Mar-a-Lago address. Under an agreement with the City of Palm Beach, NO ONE can live at Mar-a-Lago for more than three days in any seven day period or more than 21 days in any 12 month period. This does not meet the legal residency requirements because, technically, the Trumps are merely visiting Mar-a-Lago.