Trump is No Longer Afraid of Voting by Mail
Former U.S. President Donald Trump, 2024. Photo: X/ @enakgina
June 17, 2024 Hour: 11:23 am
Previously, he used to repeatedly say that mail-in voting is susceptible to manipulation.
Lara Trump, co-chair of the Republican National Committee and daughter-in-law of the Republican candidate for the White House, now wants to promote early and mail-in voting, which Donald Trump discredited in the last elections for supposedly facilitating fraud that was never proven.
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Wearing Donald Trump’s unmistakable red “MAGA” cap, Brittney Moxley is clear about one thing. On November 5th, she will go in person to the polling place to vote for the Republican candidate because she believes that in-person voting is the only way to prevent fraud.
The fear of this Detroit resident, in the battleground state of Michigan, key to deciding the next occupant of the White House, is the result of years of discredit propagated by Trump himself against the electoral system.
The former president has repeatedly, without evidence, claimed that mail-in voting is susceptible to manipulation and that Democrats used it in 2020 to give Joe Biden the victory. But something is changing in the last few weeks.
The Republicans change their stance
The Republican Party is beginning to encourage its supporters to use all available voting methods next November, including early voting, to secure Trump’s victory against Biden. The person leading this new strategy within the party is Lara Trump, a new heavyweight in the Republican Party, demonstrating that the Trump family effectively controls the levers of the conservative movement.
“We want you to vote. We will ensure that your vote is counted, but vote early, by mail, or however necessary,” the leader said over the weekend at a far-right forum held in Detroit, at the same convention center where four years ago, the county votes were counted and a group of Trump supporters protested, alleging a false electoral fraud.
Although Trump still publicly distrusts mail-in voting, he recently indicated his change of stance by saying on his social network Truth that “both early voting and same-day voting are good options.”
The Democratic and Republican parties had similar stances on early voting until months before the 2020 elections, when, anticipating a significant increase in mail-in voting due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump began discrediting this system.
His advisors have been convincing Trump that early voting should be promoted to avoid concentrating everything on election day and risking that an unforeseen event, such as bad weather or long lines, discourages his voters in crucial states.
In Michigan, there is a lot of attention because Trump won in 2016 against the then Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, by only 10,000 votes, but in 2020 he lost to Biden by 154,000 votes.
What do his voters say?
The Republican Party’s new message seems to resonate with some Trump supporters, like Sandy Jarvis, a retiree from North Carolina who traveled to Detroit to see the former president at a rally.
“We’ll play the Democrats’ game. We’ll support early voting, but when we win, I think we need to go back to in-person voting, with paper and no electronic machines,” she said.
The party’s new stance does not mean that Republicans are burying the ghost of electoral fraud. Lara Trump herself has just launched a campaign in Michigan to recruit 100,000 election observers who will “protect the votes” in key states. According to Democrats, this is merely a strategy to intimidate election officials and voters at the polls.
Dwayne Swingle, a Trump fan who follows him everywhere dressed as Uncle Sam, said that the Republican “tells the truth” when he claims electoral fraud.
Damont Bellingeer, who attends an African-American church in Detroit where Trump sought the black vote this weekend, sees it differently: “The system works. What we need to do as Republicans is go out and vote for Trump. The votes will be counted, and they will be counted correctly,” he concludes.
Source: EFE
teleSUR/ JF
