Thread by @TimAlberta

"The truly bad stuff is in states like Pennsylvania... where you're talking about universal ballots just being mailed to everybody. OK? Can we just report this correctly to the people listening?" - @DanCrenshawTX to me.

Yes. The congressman was wrong. 1/

Pennsylvania is not universally mailing ballots to everybody. The state allows for *applications* to be sent to registered voters—something Crenshaw initially said he was OK with—but it does not send ballots unsolicited.

This was a repeated point of contention in our Q&A. 2/

There are states mailing out ballots, and states mailing out *applications* for ballots.

Crenshaw conflated these processes in our Q&A, and I'm trying to distinguish them.

He's right that Nevada is mailing ballots to all RVs. But Pennsylvania and 40 other states are not.

We have 9 states (CA, CO, HI, NV, NJ, OR, UT, VT, WA) plus D.C. that automatically mail ballots to registered voters.

Only one, Nevada, could broadly be considered a swing state. To be clear: It's not true that we're flooding battleground states w/ unsolicited ballots. 4/

At first, when I raised the subject of voters receiving *applications* for ballots, Crenshaw said:

"if you have to identify who you are, prove who you are, and request that absentee ballot, like we're doing in Texas, that's fine. I don't perceive a lot of problems with that"

5/

When I circled back—reminding him Trump had criticized mailing out *applications*—Crenshaw changed his tune

"We're critical... because it's totally unnecessary and it's an attempt to get us to this universal mail-in ballot, so we see it as an unnecessarily provocative idea"

6/

Crenshaw then cited PA re: "the truly bad stuff" where states send universal ballots

Again, that's not happening in PA

5 states (CO, HI, OR, UT, WA) do it every cycle

4 states (CA, NV, NJ, VT) have allowed b/c of Covid-19

Nobody is receiving ballots in other 41 w/out applying

We got into this b/c states that allow no-excuse-absentee voting will get historic numbers of absentee ballots

Some (MI/WI) can't count them until Election Day

I asked Crenshaw how we convince people that delays in calling a winner 11/3 aren't due to "rigging" against Trump

8/

He responded by calling expanded absentee voting "extremely dangerous" and said America is "playing with fire."

Crenshaw noted how his grocery store was packed. "Everybody can go vote. This is nonsense."

He also cited Dr. Fauci's assertion that in-person voting is safe.

9/

Crenshaw told me, "Journalists need to be more honest about this."

Everybody does.

With a patchwork of laws across states, it's critical to have our facts straight. Who's getting ballots, how, and where? What's the process for counting? How are they certified? Good Qs...

10/

Here are two clip-and-save links, to make sense of those rules

1) state-by-state policies on absentee voting, via @BrookingsInst ... brookings.edu/research/votin…

2) state-by-state rules on ballot counting/processing, via my colleague @ZachMontellaro ... politico.com/news/2020/09/1…

11/

I appreciate @DanCrenshawTX saying, "We have to trust, at the end of this election, that we believe the other side won."

Absolutely. To that end, we've all got a responsibility to know these rules. We must inform the public of what to expect in the weeks ahead, and why.

/end