Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

GOP support for mail voting is growing, but hard to hear over Trump

Tom Ridge

Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge ranks among the leading Republicans who support voting by mail.

NurPhoto/Getty Images

President Trump's increasingly hyperbolic attacks on voting by mail, amplified by Attorney General William Barr and the Republican National Committee, have triggered alarms that the country is heading toward another contested election.

Trump appears to be gearing up to cast doubt on an outcome that doesn't go his way. Primaries marred by hours-long lines, voting machine malfunctions and controversies over absentee ballots have many bracing for a meltdown starting Election Day. A much bigger surge of mailed-in votes in November virtually guarantees the results won't be known for days, setting the stage for a crisis in voter confidence if the results are close enough to be challenged, as happened in 2000.

Yet for all that, voting rights advocates mobilizing to secure the election and neutralize Trump's divisive voting rhetoric have surprising and influential allies in their corner: many leading Republicans.


GOP governors, Republican election officials and prominent conservatives are increasingly pushing to expand voting by mail. They're also forcefully rejecting Trump's baseless claimsthe practice is "corrupt" because it invites fraud and foreign tampering — and helps Democrats, to boot.

"I think it's very sad and very disappointing that with almost five months to go, the president seems to [want to] try to delegitimize the Nov. 3 election," former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, a Republican, told NPR after Trump's recent escalation of attacks on mail-in voting. A former Homeland Security secretary, Ridge co-chairs a new nonpartisan group, VoteSafe, formed this spring to push to expand mail-in voting and assure safe in-person voting during this pandemic-plagued election.

When the Republican National Committee recently released an error-riddled adthat suggested without evidence that voting by mail is "rigged up" to "churn out" ballots for voters with no eligibility or signature requirements, former Republican Rep. Zach Wamp of Tennessee didn't hold back.

"Shame on you!" Wamp tweeted at RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. "I've been a GOP activist at every level for 40 years. This is bull crap +our party deserves better."

Wamp starred in his own adrecently as part of a $750,000 "Making Voting Safe" campaign to urge lawmakers on Capitol Hill, particularly Senate Republicans, to increase funding for election administration during the pandemic. Congress has granted the states $400 million so far. The House has voted to allocate $3.6 billion more as part of its latest, $3 trillion coronavirus economic recovery package, but the Senate will not move to negotiate a much-less-expensive alternative until late this month.

"Many Republican governors are expanding absentee voting options, and they need Congress's help," Wamp says in the ad, paid for by Issue One Action. Wamp co-chairs Issue One's bipartisan ReFormers Caucus of former members of Congress and administration officials promoting fixes to the political system. (The advocacy group operates The Fulcrum but has no say in its journalism.)

The Republican governors of Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire and Ohio have all encouraged major mail-in voting expansions in response to the pandemic.

Absentee voting has been around since the Civil War and has gained traction recently amid broad bipartisan support. Conservative Utah is one of five states to conduct its election entirely by mail. More than half the states already allow "no excuse" absentee voting, and about half of voters have cast ballots by mail this primary season, compared with 25 percent in 2018.

Absentee voting "comports with conservative principles," argues a recent white paper released by the R Street Institute, a generally right-leaning think tank

In "The Conservative Case for Expanded Access to Absentee Ballots," R Street scholars argue that voting absentee is partisan-neutral, cost-effective, secure, popular and inclusive of voters who are elderly and disabled. More Republicans are speaking out to defend mail-in voting in part out of self-preservation. Notes Matt Baca, director of VoteSafe: "The president is scaring his own voters away from an opportunity to cast their own ballot."

There is still plenty of partisan disagreement over mail-in voting, of course. While most Americans support giving voters the option to vote by mail, enthusiasm is stronger among Democrats, who have also been less likely than Republicans to vote in person during this year's primaries.

After Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate mailed absentee ballot request forms to all registered voters ahead of the June legislative and congressional primaries, his fellow Republicans in charge of the Legislature stepped in in to prevent a similar mailing for the general election. And in battleground Michigan, a group of Trump backers staged a letter-burning to protest the state sending all 7.7 million registered voters an application to vote absentee in November

Partisan splits in voter behavior may help fuel conspiracy theories in a close election, prominent election law scholar Richard Hasen has warned. After Pennsylvania's primary a month ago featured more Democrats voting by mail, and more Republicans voting in person, Hasen noted on his ElectionLawBlog: "If this pattern holds for November and nationwide, it means that Trump could be leading in places on election night only to have the outcome change as absentee ballots are counted in coming days."

Nevertheless, voter enthusiasm for voting by mail is unlikely to disappear after the pandemic.

The recent attacks on mail-in voting "are very problematic and destructive with regard to voter confidence," acknowledges Amber McReynolds, CEO of the National Vote at Home Institute. "Election administration must be free from partisan politics."

But she adds that voters from both parties have made their preferences clear: "I do think that this has fundamentally shifted the way that Americans are going to vote going forward." Indeed, Trump's own actions may speak louder than his words — he himself voted by mail in the recent primary.

Carney is a contributing writer.

Read More

‘Inhumane’: Immigration enforcement targets noncriminal immigrants from all walks of life

Madison Pestana hugs a pillow wrapped in one of her husband’s shirts. Juan Pestana was detained in May over an expired visa, despite having a pending green card application. He is one of many noncriminals who have been ensnared in the Trump administration’s plans for mass deportations.

(Photo by Lorenzo Gomez/News21)

‘Inhumane’: Immigration enforcement targets noncriminal immigrants from all walks of life

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — When Juan and Madison Pestana went on their first date in 2023, Juan vowed to always keep a bouquet of fresh flowers on the kitchen table. For nearly two years, he did exactly that.

Their love story was a whirlwind: She was an introverted medical student who grew up in Wendell, North Carolina, and he was a charismatic construction business owner from Caracas, Venezuela.

Keep ReadingShow less
Two speech bubbles overlapping each other.

Democrats can reclaim America’s founding principles, rebuild the rural economy, and restore democracy by redefining the political battle Trump began.

Getty Images, Richard Drury

Defining the Democrat v. Republican Battle

Winning elections is, in large part, a question of which Party is able to define the battle and define the actors. Trump has so far defined the battle and effectively defined Democrats for his supporters as the enemy of making America great again.

For Democrats to win the 2026 midterm and 2028 presidential elections, they must take the offensive and show just the opposite–that it is they who are true to core American principles and they who will make America great again, while Trump is the Founders' nightmare come alive.

Keep ReadingShow less
A child alone.

America’s youth face a moral and parental crisis. Pauline Rogers calls for repentance, renewal, and restoration of family, faith, and responsibility.

Getty Images, Elva Etienne

The Aborted Generation: When Parents and Society Abandon Their Post

Across America—and especially here in Mississippi—we are witnessing a crisis that can no longer be ignored. It is not only a crisis of youth behavior, but a crisis of parental absence, Caregiver absence, and societal neglect. The truth is hard but necessary to face: the problems plaguing our young people are not of their creation, but of all our abdication.

We have, as a nation, aborted our responsibilities long after the child was born. This is what I call “The Aborted Generation.” It is not about terminating pregnancies, but about terminating purpose and responsibilities. Parents have aborted their duties to nurture, give direction, advise, counsel, guide, and discipline. Communities have aborted their obligation to teach, protect, redirect, be present for, and to provide. And institutions, from schools to churches, have aborted their prophetic role to shape moral courage, give spiritual guidance, stage a presentation, or have a professional stage presence in the next generation.

Keep ReadingShow less
King, Pope, Jedi, Superman: Trump’s Social Media Images Exclusively Target His Base and Try To Blur Political Reality

Two Instagram images put out by the White House.

White House Instagram

King, Pope, Jedi, Superman: Trump’s Social Media Images Exclusively Target His Base and Try To Blur Political Reality

A grim-faced President Donald J. Trump looks out at the reader, under the headline “LAW AND ORDER.” Graffiti pictured in the corner of the White House Facebook post reads “Death to ICE.” Beneath that, a photo of protesters, choking on tear gas. And underneath it all, a smaller headline: “President Trump Deploys 2,000 National Guard After ICE Agents Attacked, No Mercy for Lawless Riots and Looters.”

The official communication from the White House appeared on Facebook in June 2025, after Trump sent in troops to quell protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Los Angeles. Visually, it is melodramatic, almost campy, resembling a TV promotion.

Keep ReadingShow less