Trump just comes out and says it: The GOP is hurt when it’s easier to vote

[homersapien 11,347]

Trump, on expanding voting: “They had levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again." pic.twitter.com/ly4LYQqmo8

— Jacques Calonne (@JacquesCalonne) March 30, 2020

President Trump on Monday morning became the latest in a procession of Republicans to say making it easier for more people to vote would hurt his party politically.

In an interview on “Fox & Friends,” Trump referenced proposals from Democrats in the coronavirus stimulus negotiations that would have vastly increased funding for absentee and vote-by-mail options. The final package included $400 million for the effort, which was far less than what Democrats had sought.

“The things they had in there were crazy,” Trump said. “They had things — levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

Trump didn’t expand on the thought. But he clearly linked high turnout to Republicans losing elections. The most generous reading of his comment is that he was referring to large-scale voter fraud resulting from the easier vote-by-mail options; Trump has in the past baselessly speculated about millions of fraudulent votes helping Democrats in the 2016 election. The more nefarious reading would be that allowing more people to participate in the process legally would hurt his party because there are more Democratic-leaning voters in the country.

That’s apparently true, but you typically don’t see Republicans expressing the sentiment so directly. Generally, they’ll connect tighter voting rules such as Voter ID to protecting the integrity of the process.

On several occasions in recent years, though, Republicans have arguably gone further than that, as Trump just did.

In 2012, then-Pennsylvania state House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R) hailed the passage of Voter ID in his state and suggested it would be a boon to the GOP presidential nominee, Mitt Romney.

“Voter ID, which is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania: Done,” Turzai said while recounting his state party’s accomplishments.

After Romney lost the state, the state’s Republican Party chairman still said Voter ID helped.

“We probably had a better election,” the chairman, Robert Gleason, said. “Think about this: We cut [Barack] Obama by 5 percent, which was big. A lot of people lost sight of that. He beat [John] McCain by 10 percent; he only beat Romney by 5 percent. And I think that probably photo ID helped a bit in that.”

Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) offered similar comments during the 2016 presidential election.

“I think Hillary Clinton is about the weakest candidate the Democrats have ever put up,” Grothman said, adding: “And now we have photo ID, and I think photo ID is going to make a little bit of a difference as well.”

Grothman elaborated that he was referring to combating voter fraud rather than suggesting requiring ID would suppress Democratic votes in the state. “I think we believe that, insofar as there are inappropriate things, people who vote inappropriately are more likely to vote Democrat,” he said.

This is an idea Trump has referred to frequently, but there is scant evidence of actual large-scale voter fraud in this country, including in vote-by-mail options.

But Trump isn’t even the only high-ranking national Republican during the 2020 election to reference the idea that higher turnout would hamper the party’s chances. Last year, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) dismissed Democrats’ proposal to make Election Day a federal holiday, suggesting it was intended to help them win elections — apparently by increasing turnout.

“This is the Democrat plan to restore democracy?” McConnell said with a laugh. “A power grab that’s smelling more and more like exactly what it is.”

McConnell at the time referred to the underlying bill as the “Democrat Politician Protection Act.”

Surveys have indeed shown higher turnout probably would benefit Democrats, given many more nonvoters lean toward that party than they do the GOP. A 2014 study by the Pew Research Center showed that among people who weren’t registered to vote or didn’t plan to vote in that year’s midterm election, 51 percent favored the Democratic Party, while just 30 percent favored the Republican Party. Young people, in particular, tend to be liberal but vote at much lower rates than more conservative, older voters.

Democrats for years sought to make it easier to vote, including by expanding early voting and vote-by-mail options, and have accused Republicans of suppressing votes by pushing Voter ID and purging voter rolls. Polls have shown people generally favor the concept of Voter ID and believe fraud is relatively prevalent, but this belief has not been proved in any real measure.

Trump tasked then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach with leading a voter fraud commission in 2017, but the effort turned up only a handful of alleged cases before it was disbanded in January 2018. A Democrat who served on the panel called it “the most bizarre thing I’ve ever been a part of.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/30/trump-voting-republicans/

 

 

[jj3jordan 2,039]

Because the democrats cheat. He was being nice.

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

1 minute ago, jj3jordan said:

Because the democrats cheat. He was being nice.

How is allowing registered voters easier access to exercising their rights a bad thing?  I'd love to hear the explanation for this.

[Gowebb11 9,302]

A real sore point for me. Voting is a great privilege in this nation. One which many take for granted. Elections, particularly national elections do not spring up unannounced or at the last minute. If over a 10 or 12 or 14 month period you can’t (i.e. don’t) figure out how to get an ID or verify your voting status, you dont deserve to vote. There is plenty of time to call your town or city hall and figure it out. 

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

12 minutes ago, Gowebb11 said:

A real sore point for me. Voting is a great privilege in this nation. One which many take for granted. Elections, particularly national elections do not spring up unannounced or at the last minute. If over a 10 or 12 or 14 month period you can’t (i.e. don’t) figure out how to get an ID or verify your voting status, you dont deserve to vote. There is plenty of time to call your town or city hall and figure it out. 

So that's not what this is about though.  Pelosi and Dems are making the argument that we should allow better access to mail-in voting and early voting.  It's been shown that turnout increases in those places where people have more ways to vote than just on election day.  It would also help with public health should we still be in a situation dealing with COVID-19 come November.

Not everyone can make it to a poll on election day.  Many jobs can't let people go for an hour or two to vote.  Some people have kids to tend to with no one to help, so they can't stand in line after work.

The whole point, if done properly, is to allow legal voters more ways to use their right to be heard.  Yet Republicans have fought that tooth and nail because higher turnout usually leads to a Democrat winning.

[countoff 331]

13 minutes ago, Brad_ATX said:

How is allowing registered voters easier access to exercising their rights a bad thing?  I'd love to hear the explanation for this.

Hang on!  Wait a minute!

I don't think any Republican (or conservative, or even Trump) has any issue with making the physical act of voting easier for registered voters.  Whether that be in the form of absentee, or computer aided, or early voting.

Our issue is when the democrats want illegal aliens to vote, or they want to gather up a bunch of sick and impressionable homeless people to be registered and vote on the same day , or there's dead people voting via absentee ballot.  There has to be enough time and a method to ensure that the voter is a living breathing citizen of the U.S., state, and district of his/her permanent residence.

You guys are trying to distort the quotes from Republicans to imply they don't like a lot of people voting.

 

 

[countoff 331]

 

5 minutes ago, Brad_ATX said:

So that's not what this is about though.  Pelosi and Dems are making the argument that we should allow better access to mail-in voting and early voting.  It's been shown that turnout increases in those places where people have more ways to vote than just on election day.  It would also help with public health should we still be in a situation dealing with COVID-19 come November.

Not everyone can make it to a poll on election day.  Many jobs can't let people go for an hour or two to vote.  Some people have kids to tend to with no one to help, so they can't stand in line after work.

The whole point, if done properly, is to allow legal voters more ways to use their right to be heard.  Yet Republicans have fought that tooth and nail because higher turnout usually leads to a Democrat winning.

I don't think that is true.  

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

37 minutes ago, countoff said:

Hang on!  Wait a minute!

I don't think any Republican (or conservative, or even Trump) has any issue with making the physical act of voting easier for registered voters.  Whether that be in the form of absentee, or computer aided, or early voting.

Our issue is when the democrats want illegal aliens to vote, or they want to gather up a bunch of sick and impressionable homeless people to be registered and vote on the same day , or there's dead people voting via absentee ballot.  There has to be enough time and a method to ensure that the voter is a living breathing citizen of the U.S., state, and district of his/her permanent residence.

You guys are trying to distort the quotes from Republicans to imply they don't like a lot of people voting.

 

 

A quote from admittedly a long time ago, but relevant.

“I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, said in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

And Trump's comments yesterday had nothing to do with illegal aliens voting.  He was commenting on what Pelosi proposed.  Those things centered around the ability for all to vote by mail. 

https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/489435-senate-includes-400-million-for-mail-in-voting-in-coronavirus-spending

Also, Republicans issue about voting isn't just about illegal votes.  There's a stance within the party against making election day a holiday, which would obviously make it easier for folks to vote.  McConnell himself called it a "power grab" by Democrats.

https://fortune.com/2019/01/31/election-day-federal-holiday/

 

Follow what's happening, not the spin.

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

35 minutes ago, countoff said:

 

I don't think that is true.  

Yeah, it mostly is.  You will see anomalies here and there, but statistics will show more often than not it favors Dem candidates.

https://www.factcheck.org/2016/06/sanders-shaky-turnout-claim/

“Most often, higher turnout favors Democrats,” McDonald told us in an email. “Generally, it is true that low propensity voters tend to prefer Democratic candidates. However, this is just a tendency: there are also people who prefer Republicans among these low propensity voters. Thus, depending on who shows up to vote, it is possible to have higher turnout and for Republican candidates to do better.”

[McLoofus 35,182]

1 hour ago, Gowebb11 said:

A real sore point for me. Voting is a great privilege in this nation. One which many take for granted. Elections, particularly national elections do not spring up unannounced or at the last minute. If over a 10 or 12 or 14 month period you can’t (i.e. don’t) figure out how to get an ID or verify your voting status, you dont deserve to vote. There is plenty of time to call your town or city hall and figure it out. 

This completely ignores what life is like for many of those who most desperately need more representation in government. Furthermore, it suggests that voter ID laws are the only form of voter suppression. Ask a poor farmer or single parent in Alabama's black belt what is required of them to vote, compare it to what is required of you, and then throw your stones if you still think it justifiable. 

 

[Mikey 16,545]

8 minutes ago, McLoofus said:

This completely ignores what life is like for many of those who most desperately need more representation in government. Furthermore, it suggests that voter ID laws are the only form of voter suppression. Ask a poor farmer or single parent in Alabama's black belt what is required of them to vote, compare it to what is required of you, and then throw your stones if you still think it justifiable.

 

I worked in Tuskegee and Montgomery for years, and a little in Phenix City. All are in the Black Belt and I wasn't aware of any voter suppression in those places.

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

9 minutes ago, McLoofus said:

This completely ignores what life is like for many of those who most desperately need more representation in government. Furthermore, it suggests that voter ID laws are the only form of voter suppression. Ask a poor farmer or single parent in Alabama's black belt what is required of them to vote, compare it to what is required of you, and then throw your stones if you still think it justifiable. 

 

Just a taste of what happened here in Texas and other places throughout the South.

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/10/10/texas-temporary-voting-access-young-rural-voters/

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/Texas-has-closed-more-polling-places-than-any-14429443.php

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-locations/southern-us-states-have-closed-1200-polling-places-in-recent-years-rights-group-idUSKCN1VV09J

[Mikey 16,545]

6 minutes ago, Brad_ATX said:

Just a taste of what happened here in Texas and other places throughout the South.

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/10/10/texas-temporary-voting-access-young-rural-voters/

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/Texas-has-closed-more-polling-places-than-any-14429443.php

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-locations/southern-us-states-have-closed-1200-polling-places-in-recent-years-rights-group-idUSKCN1VV09J

The rural population is declining and roads are better than they were in 1950, etc. Last election, we had a whopping 165 people vote at my very rural polling place and that was considered a very good turnout. How long should that site be maintained, and at what cost?

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

10 minutes ago, Mikey said:

The rural population is declining and roads are better than they were in 1950, etc. Last election, we had a whopping 165 people vote at my very rural polling place and that was considered a very good turnout. How long should that site be maintained, and at what cost?

Did you read these at all?  Many of the closures for Texas are in Dallas and Austin.  Both are two of the 30 largest metros in the country and have seen populations surge over the last decade.  

Waco, a quickly growing city with a good population, also saw a ton of closures (44% of their polling places were closed in the last six years).

What do all of those places have in common?  They vote for Democrats in higher numbers than the rest of the state.

Here's some really key stuff to look at:

On a local level, the changes can be stark. McLennan county, home to Waco, Texas, closed 44% of its polling places from 2012 to 2018, despite the fact that its population grew by more than 15,000 people during the same time period, with more than two-thirds of that growth coming from Black and Latinx residents.

In 2012, there was one polling place for every 4,000 residents. By 2018 that figure had dropped to one polling place per 7,700 residents. A 2019 paper by University of Houston political scientists found that after the county’s transition to vote centers, more voting locations were closed in Latinx neighborhoods than in non-Latinx neighborhoods, and that Latinx people had to travel farther to vote than non-Hispanic whites.

 

Some counties closed enough polling locations to violate Texas state law. Brazoria county, south of Houston, closed almost 60% of its polling locations between 2012 and 2018, causing it to fall below the statutory minimum, along with another county. In a statement, Brazoria county clerk Joyce Hudman said the closures were inadvertent, and that this would not happen again in 2020.

A Guardian analysis based on that report confirms what many activists have suspected: the places where the black and Latinx population is growing by the largest numbers have experienced the vast majority of the state’s poll site closures.

The analysis finds that the 50 counties that gained the most Black and Latinx residents between 2012 and 2018 closed 542 polling sites, compared to just 34 closures in the 50 counties that have gained the fewest black and Latinx residents. This is despite the fact that the population in the former group of counties has risen by 2.5 million people, whereas in the latter category the total population has fallen by over 13,000.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/texas-polling-sites-closures-voting

[McLoofus 35,182]

Quote

In 2015, state Republicans announced the closures of 31 DMV offices across the state, ostensibly in a cost-saving measure. But AL.com journalists Kyle Whitmore and John Archibald found that the closures were concentrated in the black belt, and that of the 10 counties with the highest percentage of nonwhite voters, the state closed DMV offices in eight, and left them without offices entirely, meaning those voters either had to travel long distances to other counties to get licenses or visit special registrar’s offices in order to vote.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/can-doug-jones-get-enough-black-voters-to-win/547574/

Interesting that all those offices suddenly stopped being viable the year before a presidential election.

We could also talk about how Brian Kemp purged a massive number of names from Georgia voter rolls- many, many more than typically happens in a given year- the year before the gubernatorial election that he himself ran in.

Per Brad's post above, there are numerous strategies. And they all seem to favor one party. 

 

 

[Mikey 16,545]

21 minutes ago, McLoofus said:

Interesting that all those offices suddenly stopped being viable the year before a presidential election.

We could also talk about how Brian Kemp purged a massive number of names from Georgia voter rolls- many, many more than typically happens in a given year- the year before the gubernatorial election that he himself ran in.

Per Brad's post above, there are numerous strategies. And they all seem to favor one party. 

 

 

The closure of DMV offices has nothing to do with voter registration. Each county has a board of registrars and they are usually located in the county courthouse. One doesn't register to vote at the DMV. In at least one Alabama county, mine, if a person is disabled or otherwise cannot come to the courthouse to register to vote, a county employee will come to the residence and register them.

The closure of DMV offices provided some on the left with a false item to howl about, but it had no affect on voter registration.

[Mikey 16,545]

32 minutes ago, Brad_ATX said:

Did you read these at all?  Many of the closures for Texas are in Dallas and Austin.  Both are two of the 30 largest metros in the country and have seen populations surge over the last decade.  

Sounds like a Texas problem to me. I live in Alabama.

PS: When did this become a normal usage: "Latinx"? I've never seen it before. What does it mean, exactly?

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

15 minutes ago, Mikey said:

Sounds like a Texas problem to me. I live in Alabama.

PS: When did this become a normal usage: "Latinx"? I've never seen it before. What does it mean, exactly?

Latinx is just a gender neutral term instead of using Latino or Latina.  It's essentially representative of the whole Latin population.

As for your first sentence, it's more than just a Texas problem.  Texas is one of many, primarily southern states, doing this kind of thing.  Here's some stuff about Alabama.  Remember, these laws were passed to prevent voter fraud, right?  Key line:

Under our old system, which allowed dozens of different forms to establish a voter’s ID, we had zero issues. In fact, in the last 30 years, there has been one instance in which a voter’s identity was stolen and an illegal ballot cast. And that one instance was caught and prosecuted. 

https://www.alreporter.com/2020/02/11/opinion-voter-suppression-is-still-a-deciding-factor-in-alabama-elections/

[countoff 331]

1 hour ago, Brad_ATX said:

Yeah, it mostly is.  You will see anomalies here and there, but statistics will show more often than not it favors Dem candidates.

https://www.factcheck.org/2016/06/sanders-shaky-turnout-claim/

“Most often, higher turnout favors Democrats,” McDonald told us in an email. “Generally, it is true that low propensity voters tend to prefer Democratic candidates. However, this is just a tendency: there are also people who prefer Republicans among these low propensity voters. Thus, depending on who shows up to vote, it is possible to have higher turnout and for Republican candidates to do better.”

What I meant by "I don't think that is true" is your assertion that the Republican party fought that tooth and nail because a higher turnout results in Democrats winning.  They fight against the Democrats making it easy for voter fraud.  And they also fight against a holiday on voting day because we already have too many holidays that adversely affect business.  The polls are typically open early in the morning until late in the evening.  Plus there is absentee voting.  People have plenty of time and methods to vote without declaring a holiday.

[countoff 331]

Plus the voter turnout was very high in the battle ground states in 2016 and Trump and the Republicans won in most of those states.

[homersapien 11,347]

2 hours ago, Gowebb11 said:

A real sore point for me. Voting is a great privilege in this nation. One which many take for granted. Elections, particularly national elections do not spring up unannounced or at the last minute. If over a 10 or 12 or 14 month period you can’t (i.e. don’t) figure out how to get an ID or verify your voting status, you dont deserve to vote. There is plenty of time to call your town or city hall and figure it out. 

That's a pathetically weak substitute for the "millions of fraudulent voters" excuse for making voting more difficult.  But no less illogical and irrational.

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

11 minutes ago, countoff said:

What I meant by "I don't think that is true" is your assertion that the Republican party fought that tooth and nail because a higher turnout results in Democrats winning.  They fight against the Democrats making it easy for voter fraud.  And they also fight against a holiday on voting day because we already have too many holidays that adversely affect business.  The polls are typically open early in the morning until late in the evening.  Plus there is absentee voting.  People have plenty of time and methods to vote without declaring a holiday.

Look at the other links I posted, specifically with regards to the lengths Republican lawmakers here in Texas have gone to quell the vote by closing down polling places in populated areas dominated by Democratic voters.

As for absentee voting, in many states you need a reason to cast one, like being out of town.  Not being able to get off of work isn't a good enough reason to obtain absentee.  Remember, poor people are especially hurt by limiting voting to just one day or not making mail-in more readily available.  They are the ones often working more than one job and hourly places won't let you off to stand in line on election day.

And the voter fraud thing is really a bad excuse.  The rate of voter fraud in this country is extremely minimal.  In 2016, there were four cases.....in the country.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/0-000002-percent-of-all-the-ballots-cast-in-the-2016-election-were-fraudulent/

 

Factcheck.org goes even deeper.

https://www.factcheck.org/2016/10/trumps-bogus-voter-fraud-claims/

 

This is my issue with some folks here though.  You guys go off of gut feeling too much, especially on the fraud thing.  The numbers simply don't back up what you want to believe.

[homersapien 11,347]

2 hours ago, countoff said:

Hang on!  Wait a minute!

I don't think any Republican (or conservative, or even Trump) has any issue with making the physical act of voting easier for registered voters.  Whether that be in the form of absentee, or computer aided, or early voting.

Our issue is when the democrats want illegal aliens to vote, or they want to gather up a bunch of sick and impressionable homeless people to be registered and vote on the same day , or there's dead people voting via absentee ballot.  There has to be enough time and a method to ensure that the voter is a living breathing citizen of the U.S., state, and district of his/her permanent residence.

You guys are trying to distort the quotes from Republicans to imply they don't like a lot of people voting.

 

 

Show the actual evidence of such large voting fraud:

Trump tasked then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach with leading a voter fraud commission in 2017, but the effort turned up only a handful of alleged cases before it was disbanded in January 2018.

[homersapien 11,347]

2 hours ago, countoff said:

You guys are trying to distort the quotes from Republicans to imply they don't like a lot of people voting.

 

More

Did you not even read the OP?

It's about Republicans admitting they don't like large voting turnouts.  They admitted it puts them at a disadvantage.

[homersapien 11,347]

25 minutes ago, countoff said:

What I meant by "I don't think that is true" is your assertion that the Republican party fought that tooth and nail because a higher turnout results in Democrats winning.  They fight against the Democrats making it easy for voter fraud.  And they also fight against a holiday on voting day because we already have too many holidays that adversely affect business.  The polls are typically open early in the morning until late in the evening.  Plus there is absentee voting.  People have plenty of time and methods to vote without declaring a holiday.

What Democratic voter fraud?  

It's not true simply because you believe it.

You are being spun.