By Hedrick Smith
Washington – The ominous danger lurking behind Donald Trump’s mindless, factless fear-mongering about mail voting is that his real aim is not to banish all-mail voting in 2020 but to legitimize in advance his rationale for rejecting the results of the 2020 presidential election if he loses, a prospect that now seems to panic Trump.
Trump is about winning, above all. He has shown little respect for constitutional norms. He uses them or abuses them to suit his personal advantage. When it suits him, he equates mail voting with vote fraud, without evidence and even when Republican governors and secretaries of state reject his false accusations. And when mail voting works to his benefit, he pockets the gains and applauds.
Last month, Trump had several tweet tantrums about plans for mail voting in California, Michigan, and Nevada, three states he fears losing, but he had nothing negative to say about the heavy mail vote that helped Republican candidates win special congressional elections in California and Wisconsin.
Imagine for a moment what Trump will say or do if next fall we have a repeat of the cliff-hanger election of 2000, with Florida’s hanging chads, or an electoral vote, as in 2016, where the margin of victory was less than 80,000 votes spread across three pivotal states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
In those scenarios, Trump’s current rants against voting-from-home-to-avoid-COVID-19 are a political insurance policy. They are a tool for his real objective – seeding public mistrust of mail voting so that in the crunch of November, he can mobilize mass support for challenging the legitimacy of a Joe Biden victory in any battleground state and declaring a rigged election that leaves Trump in possession of the White House.
Trump’s Tweets Are a Rehearsal for Next November