Rigged! Democrats will steal the election!

Trump:  If he wins, he wins. If he loses, it was stolen.

Donald Trump has a task: Prepare Americans to reject the election results because of absentee voter fraud. 

Donald Trump has a problem: Florida Republicans use absentee voting to get out the Republican vote.

Trump had a simple, blunt message: that Democrats were arranging to steal the election. He tweeted:

     "There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-in Ballots weill be anything less than substantially fraudulent Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people. . . This will be a Rigged Election. No way!"

Click: NBC news story

Republican officeholders and Fox News took up the fight against mail-in voting. Mailed ballots have become a partisan issue now, for the first time. In Nevada the legislature voted on party lines on the issue of sending ballots to every voter, with every Republican voting no.

Newt Gingrich joined the fight:

     "I think this is going to be the most disastrous election in American history at the rate at which the Democrats are trying, frankly, to set up an ability to steal it because I don't think they think they can win an honest election.”

There is a problem with this message of opposition to absentee voting. One is that Trump himself, his family, Republican officeholders, and his staff vote by mail themselves. Another is that vote by mail elections have been going on for years, including in bright red states, and Republicans hold office because of elections with mailed in votes. A third is that it has been a longtime successful practice in Florida--a swing state essential to Trump's election chances--to encourage Republicans to vote by mail. It is a big part of the successful Florida Republican GOTV program. Trump heard from Florida Republicans. 

Polling shows Trump's attack on mail voting was working and that Republican voters were becoming less likely to vote absentee and would choose instead to vote in person, a voting method that is less reliable and accountable than vote by mail. People intending to vote on election day sometimes run into problems, long lines, schedule conflicts, traffic. Things come up, especially for seniors, who had traditionally been Republican and Trump voters in Florida.

Click: Fox web story

One of Trump's gifts in politics is his bluntness. It gets him in trouble but his messages are not diluted or muddled by nuance. Tweets suit him. Words like "There is NO WAY (ZERO!)" are unambiguous. 

Now Trump has a problem. He needs to thread a needle, and be credible while he does it. Making a careful, nuanced good faith argument is the luxury of politicians who have credibility as scrupulous truth-tellers--not Trump's brand. For better or worse, Trump is a blunt force partisan messenger. 

The Florida situation forced Trump to change his message. Now he is saying that Nevada's mail-in voting is fraudulent, of course, and his campaign is suing Nevada,  but that Florida's mail in voting system is, actually, just fine, after all.

Then Trump said aloud the quiet part, the reality that needed to be hidden by hypocrisy.  Florida, Trump said, "has got a great Republican governor and it had a great Republican governor." Therefore, he has "great confidence" in the Florida election. This isn't a good faith distinction, it is a partisan one, which undermines his argument that they can do absentee balloting "extremely professionally. Florida is different from other states." The difference is the political party of the governor. 

Oops. Too obvious. Even Fox News cannot avoid noting the hypocrisy. The Fox website this morning read:   

     "Trump has railed against mail-in voting over fraud concerns as more states seek to increase it during the pandemic.  On Tuesday, however, Trump encouraged voters in Florida to request mail-in ballots, where he said the system was 'Safe and Secure, Tried and True.' Trump has voted absentee in Florida." 

In fact there are potential problems with mail in voting. Oregon has experience with it and has systems in place to deal with them. On ballots that come in before the election day deadline, they contact the voter if there is a questionable signatures. There is a hard deadline that ballots must be received by 8:00 p.m. on election day, so voters are repeatedly urged to send them in by the Saturday prior to the Tuesday election to give the Post Office ample time to deliver them. There are secure drop boxes.

Trump is leading Americans  toward a situation in which, in a close election, Trump will either win or be able to contest it as stolen if he loses. The attack on absentee ballots sets that up because we have experience of elections in which the first ballots counted were votes by people who voted in person, but excluded mailed in ballots. Trump could announce based on early returns that he won fair and square based on the first votes tallied, and that votes that came in late should not be counted because, having been mailed, they were fraudulent, as he had warned. This would be the nightmare scenario. Trump and Fox claiming victory--done deal-- with county clerks and states mired in lawsuits over whether mailed in ballots could even be opened, much less counted. Having claimed victory, a change would be presented as a theft. Trump would be arguing that votes that happened to skew Republican were valid; votes that happened to skew Democratic were not--that it was a matter of vote credibility.

Except he spilled the beans. Republican partisans will not mind him saying aloud that Republican governors can be trusted and Democrats cheat, and therefore absentee balloting in Florida is OK but not so in states with Democratic governors. But Trump muddled his message, and made the partisanship explicit.

Even Fox News noticed it.