Mellman: Protections & threats

Here’s the good news: Thousands of state and local officials — attorneys general, secretaries of state, governors, state and county boards of elections, and state and local law enforcement — are working assiduously to protect your right to vote, to have that vote counted and to ensure that vote counts in deciding our nation’s future.

The bad news is that the president and his minions are working overtime to suppress the vote and transfer the locus of political decision making away from the people, and to bodies favorable to him instead.

The spectrum of threats ranges from arcane but legitimate rules, to the unconstitutional usurpation of power and the illegal use of force.

Allow me to highlight just three impediments to ensuring the will of the people is registered and carried out.

While Donald Trump thinks some white supremacists are “very fine people,” his own Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently labeled these groups “the most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland.”

Ominously, DHS reports, these groups may be taking aim at the November election, targeting events related to the “election itself, election results, or the post-election period. Such actors could mobilize quickly to threaten or engage in violence.”

Violence by Trump allies will attempt to frighten Democrats away from the polls and to give the president an excuse to engage the armed federal units that helped incite and intensify riots in Portland, Ore., and elsewhere.

A second threat is the president’s ongoing effort to delegitimize every vote cast by Election Day but counted afterward. Trump’s latest salvo: Monday’s Tweet — “Big problems…with Mail-In Ballots…Must have final total on November 3rd”.

There are no such problems, and under our Constitution, each state regulates its own elections, deciding for themselves when to start processing absentee votes and until when to accept those postmarked by Election Day. No rule, law or precedent requires a complete count on Nov. 3.

Trump only elevates the Nov. 3 results because the early returns, which in many states will not include absentees, will be more likely to favor him. The reason: this year, Democrats have been voting by mail much more frequently than Republicans.

Third, among myriad threats, will be systematic attempts to disqualify ballots.

In 2016, 318,728 mail-in ballots were rejected. Thirty-two states can reject your ballot without even telling you.

Professors David Cottrell, Michael Herron and Daniel Smith analyzed data from Florida’s 2018 election and found 27,885 mailed ballots were rejected.

That number is two and half times greater than the margin by which Republican Rick Scott won his Senate seat that year.

Not knowing for whom they were cast, we can’t say rejected ballots made the difference, but they could have.

With this year’s avalanche of mail votes, there’ll be more rejections.

Those rejections hit communities disproportionately. In 2018, votes from Black Floridians were more than twice as likely to be rejected as votes from whites. And Latino votes were over two and half times more likely to be rejected than votes cast by white people.

Those who haven’t voted by mail in the past are almost three times more likely to be rejected than ballots from those with vote-by-mail experience. With more new mail voters than ever, rejection will be a bigger problem.

To be sure, some of these rejections were, and will be, “valid” under the rules, but unscrupulously partisan officials can wreak havoc in a close race.

Voters can help ensure their mail vote is accepted, not only by reading and precisely following sometimes convoluted instructions, but also by checking on their ballot and “curing” potential problems.

While Florida officials must inform voters if their mail-in ballots have been rejected, in most states, it’s on you to contact your board of elections to determine whether your mail ballot was rejected and take steps to get it counted.

To make certain you count, check on and cure your mail ballot.

Mellman is president of The Mellman Group and has helped elect 30 U.S. senators, 12 governors and dozens of House members. Mellman served as pollster to Senate Democratic leaders for over 20 years, as president of the American Association of Political Consultants, and is president of Democratic Majority for Israel.