By P.S. White
We should be ever-vigilant against leaders who use the tactics of dictators to conceal their intentions and ambitions and to facilitate their overreach of authority.
As we head towards possibly the most pivotal election in our country in over 150 years, Donald Trump is again trying to invalidate any initiatives that would extend the ability to vote-by-mail to all citizens of a state. California's Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order on Saturday assuring that every voter in the state will receive a mail-in ballot. This is meant as an option, not a replacement, to voting in-person, and it acts as a vital safety measure if the current pandemic continues.
In response to this action, Trump put out the following tweet:
If mail-in voting is blocked for the general public, that forces people to chose risking their health by casting a vote in person if the Coronavirus threat continues into Fall (which many experts believe it will). The majority of the people polled across the county support voting by mail, and if their states move forward with initiatives to allow that, Trump has no authority to stop it.
The president cannot dictate how elections are held, and his attempts to cast doubt on mail-in voting (which he himself recently did) should be uniformly rejected. There is no sense trying to get into the weeds and bicker over the details. That's what Trump wants because he works best when he can muddy the waters by throwing out unsubstantiated claims that cannot be proven but which create doubt.
The states decide how to conduct their elections (didn't the GOP once consider themselves the party of States Rights?), and the federal government must accept the results. If Trump and the Republicans are allowed to dictate in any way how the elections are handled, or invalidate the results, then our once free and Democratic country takes the next step towards tyranny.
We should be ever-vigilant against leaders who use the tactics of dictators to conceal their intentions and ambitions and to facilitate their overreach of authority.
As we head towards possibly the most pivotal election in our country in over 150 years, Donald Trump is again trying to invalidate any initiatives that would extend the ability to vote-by-mail to all citizens of a state. California's Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order on Saturday assuring that every voter in the state will receive a mail-in ballot. This is meant as an option, not a replacement, to voting in-person, and it acts as a vital safety measure if the current pandemic continues.
In response to this action, Trump put out the following tweet:
This, of course, is yet another attempt by Trump to overreach his authority and to create doubts in the minds of Americans about the validity of the upcoming elections. The fact is that the states have the authority to conduct the elections in the manner they best see fit, especially the presidential election. There is also no substantial evidence that mail-in votes are subject to a higher level of fraud than any other form of voting (all of which have proven to be reliable), and several states have been doing it for years with no issues. But Trump, and the Republicans in general, continue to push conspiracy theories that mail-in ballots are unreliable in order to create doubt about the upcoming elections, especially if the results go in favor of the Democrats.So in California, the Democrats, who fought like crazy to get all mail in only ballots, and succeeded, have just opened a voting booth in the most Democrat area in the State. They are trying to steal another election. It’s all rigged out there. These votes must not count. SCAM!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 9, 2020
If mail-in voting is blocked for the general public, that forces people to chose risking their health by casting a vote in person if the Coronavirus threat continues into Fall (which many experts believe it will). The majority of the people polled across the county support voting by mail, and if their states move forward with initiatives to allow that, Trump has no authority to stop it.
The president cannot dictate how elections are held, and his attempts to cast doubt on mail-in voting (which he himself recently did) should be uniformly rejected. There is no sense trying to get into the weeds and bicker over the details. That's what Trump wants because he works best when he can muddy the waters by throwing out unsubstantiated claims that cannot be proven but which create doubt.
The states decide how to conduct their elections (didn't the GOP once consider themselves the party of States Rights?), and the federal government must accept the results. If Trump and the Republicans are allowed to dictate in any way how the elections are handled, or invalidate the results, then our once free and Democratic country takes the next step towards tyranny.
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