JASON RANTZ

Rantz: Don’t use WA success for national vote-by-mail push

May 26, 2020, 8:01 PM | Updated: May 27, 2020, 10:48 am

Republicans and Democrats are in an intense debate about the worthiness of a national vote-by-mail system. Come November, there’s fear that going to the polls would put voters at an undue risk of coronavirus exposure. But Republicans warn this system is not safe.

Both sides have merit but one thing is for certain: Democrats shouldn’t use Washington as a reason to move to mail-in voting in November. Why? Because it took years for Washington to get to where it finds itself now.

The vote-by-mail debate

President Donald Trump weighed-in early Tuesday morning, warning against a national mail-in voting system. He said it would be ripe with fraud. Democrats, and Twitter, do not like the message.

Democrats are now pushing for mail-in ballots arguing that they think it’s safer than going to a polling station where it could be difficult to socially distance oneself. Though we have no clue what the coronavirus crisis will look like in November, assuming nothing changes, it’s reasonable to say it would be safer to mail-in your ballot.

Many Democratic analysts and politicians point to Washington state as a success story. We do mail-in voting with little fraud, so that shows it’s safe to vote by mail!

I wish they would stop using Washington as an example unless they’re willing to wait several years before implementing a national vote-by-mail system.

Washington’s success took years

Thanks to the efforts of Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman, we have a fully functioning and safe vote-by-mail system here. Is it perfect? No. We still have instances of fraud, however minimal. A national system will have the same fraud in the future. If you implement it for November, you’ll have a ton of fraud.

A state’s vote-by-mail system is only as good as your secretary of state. We happen to have an amazing one. Kudos to Wyman for running such a tight ship when it comes to our mail-in ballots.

But let’s not pretend this system was created overnight — or can be created in five months for the November general election. Our system started less than a decade ago (a little earlier if you ignore Pierce County, which still allowed in-person voting in 2007 when the rest of the state went to mail-in ballots).

Washington has a rigorous security system where ballot signatures are checked against signatures on file. And when they don’t match, voters are contacted. This is part of the reason why our election results are so slow to come in. We also have staff who have been doing this for years — that’s another big reason why our elections work relatively flawlessly.

The country isn’t ready for vote-by-mail

Wyman told The New York Times that it’s unrealistic for the entire country to have a safe and secure system for the November election. She’s right.

“[Y]ou can’t just flip a switch and go from real low absentee ballots to 100% vote-by-mail,” Wyman said. “I mean, as we sit here right now, in April, with a November election deadline, I’m not sure you could do it in states across the country.”

King County Elections Director Julie Wise seems to concur, telling Crosscut, “We’ve been at it for a decade. It’s not an easy lift to make that transition.”

Does anyone truly believe every state, in a matter of months, can set up entire vote-by-mail systems? Really? In Iowa, the Democratic National Committee went to an app-based caucus counting system. It used new technology that they worked on for about two years. We know how that story ended.

Republicans argue this system is ripe for fraud. They’re right: Unless you have enough time to set up the system, to make it secure, it can very easily be exploited. And there are legitimate concerns over ballot harvesting (though both sides use it; it should be illegal).

Here in Washington, the state just sent hundreds of millions of dollars to fraudulent unemployment scammers in Nigeria. You don’t think nefarious forces could take advantage of an untested mail-in ballot system in a state that’s never done much beyond absentee voting?

This is all political for the Democrats

Mail-in ballots don’t favor one party over the other. And, as someone from California, I can say vote-by-mail is more convenient than going to a polling station. But that’s not what this debate is about. I support a national vote-by-mail system. I just don’t think we’re ready for it now.

Democrats claim President Trump pans vote-by-mail because he just wants to suppress the vote. The idea is that fewer people will vote during a pandemic and that will favor him (forgetting, I guess, that Trump lost the popular vote without a pandemic and still won the election).

This is their go-to claim: The only way Republicans win is to cheat you out of your vote. It’s a weird claim. Why do Republicans ever lose elections? Too lazy to cheat the system that time around? I’m sure Georgia “Governor” Stacey Abrams will want to weigh in; the sore loser refuses to go away.

For Democrats, they’re just setting up for another four years of claiming his election — in this case, re-election — is illegitimate. They know they can’t set up a vote-by-mail system in time for November.

Fearing Joe Biden will lose, Democrats are setting the stage to excuse-away the loss. They still claim Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, even though they knew years ago that there was no evidence. Still, Trump won because Putin deemed it so — it definitely had nothing to do with Hillary Clinton choosing not to campaign in Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, Democrats can present themselves as heroes fighting for your right to safely vote. They just don’t care if you safely vote. They just want the perception to be that they support you.

Listen to the Jason Rantz Show weekday afternoons from 3-6 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (or HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here. Follow @JasonRantz on Twitter and Instagram or like me on Facebook

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Rantz: Don’t use WA success for national vote-by-mail push