The Trump-branded Republican Party is less interested in promoting voting by mail than in legal challenges aimed at voting systems.
In a victory for the extremist wing of the Republican Party, it looks like Donald Trump’s hand-picked leadership team at the Republican National Committee has officially scrapped the GOP’s plan to encourage early voting this election cycle. Instead, the party is taking steps to prioritize legal challenges to voting systems ahead of November.
As part of the layoffs and budget cuts carried out this week by the newly installed leadership team, they are shuttering a program dedicated to mail-in voting, according to The Washington Post. The significance, of course, is that Trump has pushed false claims that mail-in voting is rife with voter fraud since 2020, months before he lost the election to Joe Biden. Ever since the election, Trump has continued to spread conspiracy theories that mail-in voter fraud cost him that race. In reality, there’s ample evidence that allowing people to vote by mail doesn’t have a partisan effect (and if it does, data shows the impact appears to favor Republicans).
They’re the same people for the most part. They’ve just been incrementally radicalized over the past few decades. Rush Limbaugh -> Fox News -> Tea Party -> Facebook Conspiracies -> Trumpism -> Q Nonsense -> White/Christian Nationalism.
They sit on the issues wherever they’re told to sit. If Trump says mail in voting is bad they will cheer as it gets gutted even if it inconveniences them personally.