Day 1,297: Trump is doing everything he can to stop Americans from voting

Donald Trump’s antidemocratic and authoritarian inclinations are currently coalesced behind the idea that he is very likely to lose the 2020 election absent a shift of some sort. And he has deemed his best chance to win has nothing to do with changing hearts and minds by making his case why he deserves four more years in office. Instead, the goal is almost entirely to disenfranchise huge swaths voters and tamp down the number of ballots cast.

To that end, Trump is growing bolder and more sinister. He has gone from blasting the practice of mail-in voting — despite engaging in the practice himself, along with much of his administration — to threatening to challenge laws that expand the practice.

Now, Trump, by way of a crony, is trying to undermine the USPS and simultaneously make it vastly more expensive for states to send mail-in ballots.

Worse than just economic disenfranchisement on states, the Trump team is doing everything in its power to invalidate the votes that do make it through the absurd obstacle course.

And around the time Trump started musing about delaying the election last week, aides and outside advisers began scrambling to ponder possible executive actions he could take to curb mail-in voting — everything from directing the postal service to not deliver certain ballots to stopping local officials from counting them after Election Day.

Trump sees that winning a free and fair election with widespread turnout is going to be nearly impossible. So he’s trying to make it an expensive and unfair election with heavily depressed turnout.

Democracy be damned, Trump sees this as vital for him. The GOP is all-in on the strategy too, power hungry and desperate to continue ruling from the minority position on most issues in the country.

1,297 days in, 165 to go

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