In an effort to control the results of the upcoming 2024 election, the Republican Party has delivered a Trump-induced ultimatum: any ballots not counted by the end of election day should be negated and thrown away!
Politics :
Now that Donald Trump has successfully installed his own daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as chairperson of the Republican National Committee, he effectively owns the GOP. So, it should come as no surprise that he is already using the RNC to rig the rules in his favor — just in time for the November election.
According to ABC News, Donald Trump has instructed his chairperson daughter-in-law to use the RNC — and every legal remedy available — to attempt to halt the counting of all ballots by the end of election day. This means that if a state experiences a technical error and cannot complete the counting of votes by midnight on election day, all uncounted votes would be tossed in the trash and ruled irrelevant to the electoral outcome.
“You cannot have ballots counted after elections are over. And right now, that is one of the many lawsuits we have out across this country to ensure that just that happens, that we have a free, fair, and transparent election,” Lara Trump said in an attack against mailed votes during a recent appearance on Fox News. “So in Nevada, as you pointed out, we are saying we want on Election Day, that to be the last day that mail-in ballots can be counted,” she continued.
If Donald Trump wins his way, it will affect millions of Americans.
Ballots cast by members of the military (for example) who are eligible to vote but are deployed overseas could be invalidated if the mail coming from a foreign country doesn’t arrive on time. Election centers in states experiencing technical issues could see hundreds of thousands of votes (or more) ruled ineligible if poll workers cannot count all votes by midnight on election night.
Forget postmarks, existing election rules, and the human factor in what it takes to count millions of votes. According to Trump, count what you can and then stop at midnight and throw everything else away.
Donald Trump made it clear back in 2020 that he wants to control the election by dismissing ballots that come in by mail — mostly because they traditionally favor the Democrats. By setting a midnight deadline on election night, Trump believes he can affect the outcome and avoid being inconvenienced by having to wait a few days (while ALL votes are counted) to know the winner.
Trump is so deadset on controlling the election that he is using the RNC to initiate legal cases in battleground states just to get his way.
In 2021, Nevada Democrats passed a law allowing mail-in votes to be tallied up to 4 days after the election — so long as the ballots were postmarked by the end of the day on Election Day. However, Trump is fighting against that law.
“Nevada’s ballot receipt deadline clearly violates federal law and undermines election integrity in the state,” RNC co-chair Michael Whatley said in a statement. “Ballots received days after Election Day should not be counted.”
In Pennsylvania, Trump staged a legal coup to tip the scales in his favor.
“A couple weeks ago, we won a big lawsuit in the state of Pennsylvania,” Trump recently bragged. “They wanted to take off dates from mail-in ballots, of course, the Democrats, in an effort to make it easier to cheat. We pushed back on that. We won,” he said.
Trump was referring to an opinion by Pennsylvania’s Judge Thomas Ambro who wrote: “The Pennsylvania General Assembly has decided that mail-in voters must date the declaration on the return envelope of their ballot to make their vote effective. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania unanimously held this ballot-casting rule is mandatory; thus, failure to comply renders a ballot invalid under Pennsylvania law.”
Or, in other words, a Pennsylvania voter could mail their ballot weeks before it’s due. However, if they don’t write the current date on their envelope, their ballot will be voided and discarded.
Needless to say, civil liberty groups are fighting back against Trump’s election ploy.
“We strongly disagree with the panel majority’s conclusion that voters may be disenfranchised for a minor paperwork error like forgetting to write an irrelevant date on the return envelope of their mail ballot. We are considering all of our options at this time,” Ari Savitzky, a lawyer with the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said in a statement.
So folks, keep your eyes open. Donald Trump is using his newfound ownership of the Republican National Committee (and their bank account) to alter voting laws to his advantage. He wants ALL ballots counted by midnight on election night, no matter what. Any votes not tallied by that time — regardless of the reason — will be tossed in the trash.
“I hope the RNC is putting as much time and energy into educating voters on how to participate in elections as they put into suing the state of Nevada,” Democratic Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said in response.
OK WASSUP! discusses Politics:
Trump says count ballots by midnight or throw them away.
NBC: When Donald Trump held a rally last year in Erie County, an important area in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, the top Republican official there went one by one to the 11,000 people waiting in line to ask one question: Would you like to vote by mail? It did not go well. “I tried to give them a mail-in ballot application, and could only get out about 300,” Tom Eddy, head of the county’s Republican Party, said. “Every one of them said either, ‘No, that’s not the right way to vote,’ or ‘Trump does not agree with it.’” What happened in Erie County is emblematic of the ongoing feud within the GOP over one of the most fundamental elements of elections: how to vote. And it reflects a strain at a critical time for the party, when national and battleground polling has shown the 2024 presidential election could be… Read more »