On Friday, a three‑judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously paused a lower‑court injunction that had temporarily blocked the USPS from finalising and enforcing the new ballot‑delivery rule.
The rule would permit the Postal Service to withhold delivery of mail‑in and absentee ballots where state officials decline to send certain voter data to federal authorities. In practice, that sets up a confrontation between states determined to guard sensitive voter information and a federal agency now claiming it cannot guarantee accurate ballot delivery without it.
I honestly don’t know why the GOP are attacking mail-in ballots. I would guess the majority of mail-in ballot users are established older adults, a demographic that usually leans more red. If the GOP is successful in stopping mail-in ballots, won’t a higher percentage of their own voters be blocked from voting for the GOP?
It’s not about actually stopping mail-in ballots. It’s about gaining an advantage in other ways. If they lose in the courts, they will claim that mail-in ballots were illegitimate in areas where Dems won. If they win, they will say that Republican areas don’t have the funds to change their voting method away from mail-in votes, so they get a reprieve. Also if they win, they hope to get access to voter lists in Dem areas to throw out votes.
As far as who votes by mail, that is a wash. In some states, EVERYONE votes by mail. Those states are both Republican and Democrat. In other states, the people who vote by mail can be anyone from old people, people who can’t take off work, college kids who can’t get back to their state to vote, military members, expats who live overseas, etc.
Mail-in ballots are their own paper trail. Not only can they not be fucked with, they can be used to demonstrate electronic fuckery in the rest of the same election.
Every mail-in ballot (and early vote) is much harder to account for and manipulate when it comes to fucking an election as a whole. And they’ve been doing this since electronic voting was a thing. If you haven’t yet, you should definitely read Vanity Fair’s The Path to Florida which is a dissection of the Bush v. Gore fight in Florida. Be sure to note the negative 16,000 votes in Volusia County.