Trump is suppressing the GOP vote in a manner no other person or institution could accomplish.
Link to tweet
@grantstern
I have followed Florida's early voting numbers for years and this is a total reversal in early vote by mail for Republicans.
Trump is suppressing the GOP vote in a manner no other person or institution could accomplish.
Trump’s vote-by-mail conspiracy theories decimated the Republican Party’s early vote lead in...
Florida Republicans once had a robust vote-by-mail program that helped give them the edge over Democrats in the state. Unfortunately, however, President Donald Trump’s conspiracies have killed any...
rawstory.com
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/10/trumps-vote-by-mail-conspiracy-theories-decimated-the-republican-partys-early-vote-lead-in-florida-report/
Florida Republicans once had a robust vote-by-mail program that helped give them the edge over Democrats in the state. Unfortunately, however, President Donald Trump’s conspiracies have killed any lead the GOP held.
The New York Times cited University of Florida political science professor Michael McDonald, who said that this is the first election in which Democrats are casting more early votes than Republicans.
“In Florida, he said, 11.5 percent of Democrats who requested absentee ballots have returned them, compared with 8.7 percent of Republicans,” the Times reported. “The same pattern emerges in another battleground state, North Carolina, where the return rate for Democratic ballots is 32.9 percent, and the return rate for Republicans is 27.4 percent.”
In 2016, Trump’s early-vote turnout swamped Hillary Clinton, particularly in states like Florida. It’s a problem that Republicans are beginning to understand is a problem. The report explained that the GOP expected suppressed turnout because of Trump’s conspiracies; they didn’t expect it to be this bad.
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Prior to 2012, the Democratic Party in Texas did not put any emphasison vote by mail. Historically the GOP base tended to be older and the Texas GOP relied on vote by mail for GOTV. In 2011 the Texas GOP adopted a voter id law that exempted vote by mail so as to not affect the GOP base. The Texas state party decided to puruse vote by mail in part as a way to lessen the effect of the voter id law. Initally, the DOJ and the courts blocked the GOP voter id law under the Voting Rights Act until that asshole CJ Roberts gutted the voting Right Act. The party put an emphasis on vote by mail and I remember that a PAC that i was the treasurer of paid about a dollar per application to try to get vote by mail out. Since then the party has figured out how to lower the cost and have incrased vote by mail in Texas. In 2010, in my county, the GOP had about 10,000 vote by maill ballots compared to about 300 for the Democrats. In 2018, the Democrats and the GOP were about equal in vote by mail ballots which is how we carried all county wide races in 2018 where we had a candidate.
The GOP is the party of voter suppression. .Here is a chart that shows the effect of the Texas voter id law on Democratic turnout in 2014 (the one year that the ungutted act was in effect)
Greg Abbott got more votes in 2014 compared to Rick Perry while Wendy Davis got far fewer votes even though she spent more.
In 2016 the 5th Circuit affirmed this ruling and the Texas voter id law was largely gutted so that any registered voter can vote if they lack one of the approved ids and sign a Reasonable Impediment Declaration and provide one of the alternative ids which includes utility bills or bank statements.
The GOP exempted vote by mail from the voter id law because the Texas GOP relied on such law. I hope that trump's actions really backfire and help turn Texas blue
