Welcome to our next stop on the road to autocracy, the part where the autocrat-to-be tries to use the levers of bureaucracy to maintain his power.
President Trump has of course been railing against mail-in voting for months—nearly seventy times by the Washington Post’s count. Trump has been doing everything he can to vilify voting by mail and raising the specter of widespread voter fraud. Of course, voting by mail is no big deal and Trump is just trying to lay the groundwork for challenging the results if he doesn’t like them. (If he cried foul when he won in 2016, just wait to see what happens if he loses in 2020!)
Our Autocrat-in-Waiting is doing much more than just stoking fears of mail-in ballots, he’s actively meddling in the U.S. Postal Service, where his newly-appointed Postmaster General appears to be doing everything he can to slow down service. If mail-in ballots aren’t a problem, the Trumpists seem ready to make them a problem.
But there’s one thing Trump forgot. In some parts of the country, mail-in ballots help Republicans—which explains why Trump finally allowed that in Florida, voting by mail is just fine. In other words, if it helps him, mail-in ballots are fine. If it hurts him, mail-in ballots are fraudulent.