Seventy times since March, our president has vilified voting by mail on Twitter. He’s called it rigged, fraudulent, an embarrassment. Never mind that he himself casts his vote from Florida by mail, as do his wife and his press secretary. And never mind the fact that voting by mail would be safest as we continue to flounder through a pandemic. He’s been dead-set against it — until Tuesday.
On Tuesday, this staunch opponent about-faced and tweeted that in Florida, it’s “Safe and Secure.”
Now, there are many possible reasons. Maybe it’s because Florida Democrats’ requests for mail-in ballots have far outstripped Republicans’ this year. Maybe because GOP strategists realize all voters are leaning toward the safety of vote-by-mail this year.
Or maybe it’s because research shows that Black and Hispanic voters are twice as likely to have their mail-in ballots rejected.
The revealing clue is the second part of the tweet, where he says “Florida’s Voting system has been cleaned up (we defeated Democrats attempts at change).”
The “attempts at change” refers to Floridians’ supermajority vote to restore ex-felons’ voting rights, and the “defeat,” our Republican government’s flat refusal to implement the voters’ will. Trump may call that a cleanup, but I’d call it a dirty trick.