Trump abruptly flip-flopped on voting by mail — here’s why

President Donald Trump and his allies have been waging a disinformation campaign about mail-in voting, aggressively trying to delegitimize the practice that has a history in the United States dating back to the Civil War. The plan, as I’ve argued, seems to be to lay the groundwork for challenging mail-in votes or stopping them from being counted if it looks like he’s ahead with in-person ballots on Election Day.

But on Tuesday afternoon, the president suddenly changed his tune on the matter in one key state: Florida. He sent the following tweet:

The tweet references a dubious distinction that Trump has himself been trying to draw between absentee and mail-in ballots. In many jurisdictions, they’re the same thing, though absentee ballots can refer to a subset of mail-in ballots that require the voter to provide an excuse for not voting in person, such as being out of town on Election. But any concerns about mail-in ballots would apply to absentee ballots, so the president’s attempt to draw a distinction makes little sense.

It made even less sense in Florida — where, as it happens, the president votes by mail under suspicious circumstances — because Florida doesn’t have a special category of “absentee” ballots. Anyone who wants to vote by mail can do so.

So why has the president changed his tune and given the green light to mail-in voting in Florida? MSNBC’s Chris Hayes had a plausible answer:

Brian Beutler of Crooked Media added:

As NPR reported Monday, Joe Biden’s prospects in Florida look promising. If Trump loses there, he’s almost certainly lost the entire race:

...Biden has gone from a 49% to 48% polling advantage in early February to 50% to 44%, with some reputable surveys showing Biden with a double-digit lead. This is one state we expect to snap back to toss-up, but right now it’s leaning in Biden’s direction.

So abandoning the supposedly principled objection he’s had to mail-in voting for months, Trump has decided to encourage his voters to drop their ballots in the post. It may be the tactically correct move — it just comes at the cost of completely undermining his attempt to delegitimize the process. He began with such little credibility outside his support base that he may not care.

But the Washington Post’s Greg Sergent noted that Trump’s tweet almost certainly doesn’t signal an end to his war against mail-in votes — at least not in any state where he thinks it works to his advantage. Republican lawyers will continue to fight to restrict access to mail-in voting on his behalf: