Trump-backed campaign to torpedo Pennsylvania mail-in ballots 'disbanded' after midterm flop

Former President Donald Trump was banking big on having ally Doug Mastriano as Pennsylvania's governor heading into the 2024 presidential election, as Mastriano had pledged to dismantle the state's mail-in voting system that Trump blames for costing him the 2020 election.

However, Rolling Stone reports that Mastriano's landslide defeat at the hands of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has put an end to the Trump movement's hopes of destroying universal mail-in balloting.

"The effort for the constitutional amendment to roll back Act 77 — which allowed for no-excuse mail-in balloting — has been disbanded," former Trump administration official Michael Caputo told Rolling Stone. "I am not a part of it anymore, and neither is Donald Trump."

Indeed, as Rolling Stone notes, even Mastriano recently said that it was a mistake for him to constantly trash mail-in voting when Shapiro and other Democrats were using it to rack up big early vote totals that forced the GOP to rely on massive election-day turnout to remain competitive.

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Caputo similarly told Rolling Stone that his allies had now made a shift toward embracing mail-in voting in future elections.

"The activists who were on the ground in Pennsylvania who were a part of it are now working to train activists to successfully work within the legal confines of no-excuse mail-in balloting," he said.

That said, it still isn't clear whether Trump is fully on board with working within the system, as he has not let up his attacks on mail-in ballots.