After a year-long redistricting blitz, Republicans have moved on to phase two of their election strategy: securing Americans’ ballots. After the Supreme Court delivered a surprising blow to the GOP in June, allowing mail-in votes to be counted almost a week after Election Day, there’s an understandable concern that the upcoming midterms will be ripe for fraud. While conservatives are making a desperate push for the SAVE America Act to address some of that panic, that’s not the only play in the Right’s book.
President Trump, frustrated by the tight margins in the House and Senate that are bogging down these bills, has gotten creative with the problems plaguing our elections — issuing several executive orders and rules that would close the loopholes Democrats are using to undermine legitimate voters. Of course, the courts have put the brakes on some of the White House’s ideas, including one very interesting plan to involve the U.S. Postal Service (USPS).
Piggybacking on a March 31 EO, the administration instructed the USPS to oversee and streamline the states’ mail-in ballots, putting it in charge of “standard[izing] envelope design for mailed ballots” and helping states use “a unique barcode to track ballots, thus significantly reducing the chain-of-custody problem” that makes it easier to cheat. “The rule would also create, for the first time, a standardized, nationwide auditing mechanism for mail-in voting,” Alabama’s attorney general’s office points out.