It’s encouraging to see so many people on here who support Trump stopping short of agreeing with him here. I think that will change as we get closer to Election Day and it becomes more clear if he will win or lose. Assuming everyone votes on or before November 3, their votes should be collected and counted as efficiently as possible, to give the American people a clear outcome here. Mail in ballots are just as important as those completed in person, so some plans should be made to accommodate quick and accurate counting.
The country will be harmed by a petty battle to undo the will of the people. The States can avoid this and take it fully out of the hands of the candidates, and I trust they will. This is just Trump keeping his name in the news for something other than a clear fuck-up, so it’s good campaigning.
Here's the big issue.
Normally when governments have documentation deadlines that include mail submission those documents are considered to be filed on time as long as the mail is postmarked on the Due Date. This is true for every type of Tax Return in the US that I'm aware of (Tax Compliance being my profession).
Some states have this same rule for mail in ballots while for others the ballot must be Received (regardless of postmark date) by Election Day. Some of the states that require the ballot to be received by election day have changed their rules to the postmark date as they anticipate a large increase in mail in voting. The GOP has been suing these states in court to reverse the new rules and they will continue to sue.
So votes have always trickled in after Election day but there normally aren't enough to sway the election after election night. Also in past elections there hasn't been a big split between the GOP and Dems when it comes to mail in voting. But due to the pandemic there is going to be a huge uptick in voting by mail and the polls indicate it is going to skew to Dem voters in a big way.
So now the GOP ploy currently is to fight any rule changes to expand mail in voting and label these accusations as cheating (
@Hadron90 fell for this very easily).
Trump and the GOP have already laid the groundwork. They have their base supporting the lie that mail in voting is more ripe for fraud, they are buying into the bullshit that any rule changes to accommodate a much larger number of mail in ballots is cheating.
So if on Election night Trump is ahead in Florida and PA by 50,000 votes and there area 1,000,000 votes outstanding he's going to declare himself the winner and put all of his resources in the courts arguing that those 1,000,000 votes shouldn't be counted.
Also remember the hanging chads in 2000.... now we have naked ballots, signatures on the wrong line etc..... where the GOP is going to challenge everything.
If it is a blowout on election night either way hopefully we'll be good. But if it's close the stage has already been set.
