1. Update: we know for sure that 1st time mail voters are much more likely to have their ballots flagged for issues.

We also have a distinct pattern in mail data this cycle. Rs "invented" use of absentee ballots to ⬆️R turnout. Its how they dominated FL elections. Ds got wise
2. to this system over the past couple of cycles & started to up their focus on absentee voting. Where they could, they changed voting laws to allow more mail voting (CA, CO, more recently VA) & once the GOP figured out they'd no longer hold the advantage on this technique THEN
3. they started to try to frame it as risky to fraud. Still, this attack on mail/absentee voting is/was controversial in the party bc the operatives understand how much a role its played to their dominance (bc again, they've been winning by focusing on partisan turnout). When
4. Trump suddenly turned an AK-47 against it a few months ago- GOP operatives all across the country, but esp in places like FL shit a brick bc the president was not only undermining his own reelection effort, he was threatening their state-specific efforts in senate, house, gov,
5. and state leg races too. But you can't reason w Trump- he's his own worse enemy. And his attacks were so vocal and so prominent and played so much on right-wing media that polling data began to pick up a massive effect- GOP voters, even w the pandemic, were turning away from
6. mail voting in BIG numbers- which is what @WinWithJMC & I also show in our poll of rural voters in PA. But w every crisis- opportunity. If Rs were going to bail, en masse, from mail voting, & Ds are going to turn to it en masse bc of the pandemic, perhaps it could be leveraged
7. to the GOP's/Trump's adv. So enter the appointment of Dejoy into USPS, the effort to slow down deliveries, and w the RNC's legal effort, in conjunction WITH the Justice Dept, which historically protects the right to vote but in 2020 Barr is turning its power to undermine it,
8. having D ballots "sorted" into one pile, mail ballots, in some swing states could be an asset. So hatched their great plan, which we are watching play out in real-time & which Trump, who is indeed, the worst criminal in the history of the world, admits to literally every time
9. he's asked about it ("the real fight begins Nov. 4th!"). So the goal is since D ballots will be sequestered in mail-in ballots, DOJ & RNC can use the courts to gum up the count, challenge mail ballots as fraudulent, & try to head fake everyone into thinking Trump actually won.
10. Don't believe me? Fine- here's Bill Barr, champion of democracy (for Republicans). The thing that has him spitting mad- btw- are votes. Regular votes from Americans. From you! thehill.com/homenews/admin…
11. So Ds, wanting to make it safer for people to vote in a deadly pandemic and also push up turnout, have been really pushing mail ballots. But they do have other downsides. One of these is, as @BowTiePolitics points out, is the well-documented fact that they are confusing.
12. They have many requirements, any one of which can cause a ballot to get rejected. That rejection might get caught and corrected, but it isn't going to be bc the state informs you that your vote was disqualified. These include signature matching, secrecy envelope missing,
13. witness issues, and signature missing. Ballots cast at polling locations can also be rejected for issues like poorly marked choices or failure to follow the directions. The people most likely to make mistakes like this are people doing remote voting for the 1st time. Data has
14. also shown that younger voters are more likely to have their ballots rejected- w signature matching and lateness cited as the two dominant issues. So in order to determine whether voters of color/Dems are having ballots rejected in NC counties at atypical rates, we're going
15. to need to analyze data, controlling for 1st time voters. And we''re likely also going to need to consider age. But yeah- we do want to look and make sure no atypical rejection rates are occurring. This will be easier in party reg states, like NC, but can still be done in non
16. party reg states, like GA. I would be surprised if people aren't already tracking this. But as @BowTiePolitics hypothesized, we will have a ton of 1st time mail balloters this cycle, AND these will be disproportionately Dems and bc of this voters will be disproportionately
17. voters of color, so we are going to need good analysis on this. But we do need the analysis

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer 📈🔭🍌

Rachel

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @RachelBitecofer

6 Oct
1. The WH/Trump/ many congressional Republicans like @mattgaetz have FLOUNTED health & safety guidelines for covid19 - no masks, quarantines, they congregate in large groups.

They hold rallies for god's sake. Almost as soon as that started- they fell in & created a super spread
2. cluster that they are now refusing to let the CDC trace bc they know it will reveal that they tried to avoid testing, hide positive tests, failed to notify people who were positive, and sent the WH Chief of Staff, @MarkMeadows, down to Congress to infect Congress. In addition,
3. their reckless behavior has forced thousands of staffers and support staff in federal buildings as well as journalists to choose between earning a paycheck and risk exposure to a deadly virus. Follow CDC guidelines as I do, as my family does, and I have barely seen my parents
Read 4 tweets
5 Oct
1. Yes- there has been a crime in plain sight since day 1 of early vote returns in NC. My sense is that bc the GOP knows democratic accountability is broken. The Rep & R-leaning Ind portion of the electorate will support even blatant disenfranchisement of black & other
2. voters bc the right-wing media, Trump, and GOP pols have so effectively gaslit that side of the electorate into thinking that their side is the party protecting voter integrity that they would equate these measures w being more democratic and ethical- not less (again, we have
3. really slipped so much into similar territory of other nation's who, via propaganda, found their populations accept transitions into authoritarianism. Oh, and if you are a skeptical R who thinks, no YOU are the baddies! Do me a favor, go spend some time reading international
Read 6 tweets
5 Oct
1. That's bc nothing matters but partisanship + national conditions. Pure Is have are about 60/40 pro-Dem split. R Leaners, like actual Rs are STILL voting Trump at close to a 90% prob.

This hasn't moved even: Ukraine, pandemic, economic collapse, or Trump COVID.

It won't move
2. Our forecast will go back up tomorrow with the House ratings included. The 40 seats that flipped (actually, 39 now bc Ds gave up 1 for no reason in a special, CA 25, simply by failing to invest equally in ballot return operation) are pretty much universally safe,@BenMcAdams'
3. seat included. At the end of the day- his SLC-centric, suburban surge district is not "breaking bad" while that shit-show is sitting in the Oval Office. After that, assuming Ds don't change their electioneering strategies to run like the GOP's all bets are off. McAdams'
Read 31 tweets
4 Oct
Trump flaunted CDC guidelines for COVID- led thousands, if not millions of his supporters to cavlier behaviors spreading infection- some died. Then when their recklessness at the WH causes an inevitable cluster- got state of the art treatment the regular public can't access.
2. The coddling of Trump, the Trump family, Republican politicians at both the fed and state level- all of that- must stop after this.

It can't continue w/o enablers like the presidential debate commission.

No masks/social distancing- no service

And people who are high risks
3. who are attending large rallies and in congregating and not masking, etc- these people are high risk. They should not be allowed to come into spaces with other people until they have quarantined after their last risky behavior. Stop making it easy for them to endanger innocent
Read 10 tweets
4 Oct
1. That's bc that "debate" performance from Trump was literally the worst thing ever seen in American politics- & that's after 5 yrs of seeing Donald Trump do his thing.

He was advised against the "strategy" & spent the whole next day convinced he'd killed it 🙄

In my 2016 book
2. I didn't do what so many others did in their books and suddenly apply magic filters to the two 2016 campaigns. In my chapter, A Tale of Two Campaigns, in the '16 cycle as in now, I recounted how shitty Trump's 2016 campaign was, from beginning to end and on every single metric
3. Especially contrasted w HRC's campaign. It wasn't until Trump's freak accident win that all the Clinton hit books had to be quickly revised to recount what a shitty campaign she ran- they were all set to be print about how much better the Clinton campaign was than the Trump
Read 7 tweets
3 Oct
1. The absolute folly of the GOP's "COVID is a hoax we can simply pretend away & thumb our nose at" is being exposed as this massive cluster spreads:

So Far: Sens Johnson, Tillis, Lee, Kellyanne Conway, Hope Hicks, Donald Trump, Mark Meadows, Ronna McDaniel, Bill Stepien

With
2. these folks- they made decisions that led to them contracting the virus. They purposely exposed themselves to the virus, & each other while taunting and criticizing appropriate safety measures. So its hard to feel bad for them. BUT they also insisted on putting innocent people
3. in danger & at some point, positive tests are going to start to pop up for those folks. People who DO follow safety recommendations. People who just wanted these people to wear a damn mask, limit their social contacts, behave as if there is a deadly pandemic out there instead
Read 10 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!