Day 1,217: Trump threatens to pull funding from purple states trying to enfranchise voters

Democracies and republics are reliant on people having the ability to vote. Without that, they are shams.

For decades, Democrats in the U.S. have tried to expand voting rights while Republicans have routinely sought to disenfranchise voters. Few have been as brazen in their transparency as Donald Trump.

Seeing brutal poll numbers, Trump has apparently come to the conclusion that his best chance to win is to threaten swing states’ funding if they try to enfranchise more voters. His target, as it has been for months, is mail-in voting.

Trump’s threats are likely toothless, but they nonetheless reveal his 2020 election fear and endless authoritarian tendencies.

Trump claims that mail-in voting is rife with fraud. But there’s no evidence to support that. On top of that, mail-in voting works well in red and blue states.

Of course, there’s the hypocrisy of Trump engaging in mail-in voting himself.

The White House explained the duplicity of Trump’s position by explaining that Trump is Trump so Trump can do it because Trump has to do it.

There are tens of millions of Americans where voting by mail would be beneficial, whether they’re out of state, ill or don’t want to stand in a three hour line to cast their ballot.

For Trump, and many Republicans, the issue is about torching bedrock principles of the U.S.’s form of government for personal political survival.

1,217 days in, 245 to go

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