During the last presidential election, 32% of Republicans voted by mail.
IMAGO/ZUMA Press Wire
Donald Trump has continued to criticize postal voting in the United States, responsible, according to him, for his defeat in 2020. But the candidate is abandoning this crusade, aware that it could cost him dearly at the polls in November.
“A big scam”, at the origin of “massive fraud”: the tempestuous Republican has fueled numerous conspiracy theories around this voting method for years.
The septuagenarian has repeatedly insinuated, without evidence, that postal voting would have allowed the Democrats to carry out major ballot stuffing operations during the last presidential election – won by Joe Biden and the result of which he never recognized. These allegations have been denied by the authorities and in the courts.
The results look very close
Without returning to these past statements, the candidate for the November presidential election, against all expectations, announced this week the launch of an initiative… to encourage postal voting.
“The Republicans must win and we will use all the appropriate tools to beat the Democrats because they are destroying our country,” Donald Trump justified in a press release, pledging to “protect access to the vote”.
How to explain this turnaround? According to analysts: the gap between him and Democratic President Joe Biden looks so tight that he cannot afford to lose the votes of Republicans tempted by postal voting.
An expanding phenomenon
About 90% of Americans cast a ballot in person in 1996. But in recent years, advance voting – and particularly by mail – has spread spectacularly.
In the United States, each state can adapt the way its population expresses its voice. Some Americans vote on machines, others with paper ballots. Some vote on site, others remotely, weeks in advance, or on election day.
Risk of loss of votes
During the 2020 presidential election, organized in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, voters preferred postal voting to in-person voting on D-day. And if this practice was more favored by Democrats according to the Pew research institute , a significant number of Republicans – 32% – also chose this method.
The recent change in tone from the Trump camp is therefore “probably due to the fact that they realized that discouraging these forms of voting could have cost them votes” during the previous election, Ray Brescia of the ‘Albany Law School.
“The laughing stock of the world”
To justify his strong opposition to postal voting, Donald Trump has often used the example of France, which organizes its elections in person, without resorting to early voting. “We are the laughing stock of the world when it comes to elections,” declared the Republican on social networks in 2022.
Despite his numerous criticisms, Donald Trump himself used postal voting in Florida during the primaries in 2020.
His back and forth on the matter is numerous. “Our goal is an election held over one day with paper ballots – very simple – and an identity document. But until then, the Republicans must win,” he declared, reluctantly, to supporters gathered in Wisconsin in April.
(afp)
