Republicans want to destroy the law that once handed them the White House

24 March

U.S. Senator Mike Lee speaking with attendees at the 2022 Student Action Summit at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida. (Image: Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons)

There are a whole host of reasons the Republican Party of 25 years ago would be shocked to see the current party, but the latest one might be its push to gut the law that handed the GOP the White House all those years ago.

The Republican National Committee on Monday argued a case before the Supreme Court, calling for an end to the rule that allows mail-in ballots to be counted if they are received after Election Day. President Donald Trump has long railed against voting by mail as a source of fraud, despite numerous studies debunking those claims, with his MAGA allies in Congress, led by Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, pushing a bill that would ban voting by mail altogether, even for sick people and those serving in the military. At least three of the Court's conservative justices, especially Samuel Alito, seemed responsive to the RNC's arguments.

According to a Tuesday analysis from MS NOW, the prospect of gutting mail-in voting in this particular way might stun the Republican Party of the recent past, given the key role late ballots played in electing George W. Bush president in 2000.

"If an argument the Republican National Committee is making today had prevailed in 2000, then Al Gore would have been the 43rd president of the United States," MS NOW's Ryan Teague Beckwith wrote. "One major bloc of voters who would be affected by such a radical shift is the 1.3 million Americans on active duty in the military, especially the hundreds of thousands of service members stationed overseas and in war zones."

The 2000 election between Bush and Vice President Gore famously came down to the wire, with the results from Florida too close to call on Election Night. The Texas governor ended up carrying the state by less than a thousand votes, with mail-in ballots from active-duty military members helping to push him over the edge.

"It was precisely those late-arriving military ballots that helped put George W. Bush over the top in the tense days after the 2000 election. A GOP push to accept absentee ballots from overseas — and the military voters among them — ended up producing a net gain of 739 votes for Bush in Florida, enough to secure the crucial state he needed to win the presidency," Beckwith explained.

He continued: "But the Bush campaign wasn’t a passive beneficiary of this outcome. In the days after the election, it lodged preemptive legal complaints to prevent military ballots from being tossed and argued that the Gore campaign was seeking to disenfranchise the troops for even considering challenging some of the ballots. Republicans went county by county in Florida to ensure the ballots were counted. The RNC position today contradicts every aspect of that effort."

The suit before the Supreme Court argues that, because laws stipulate a specific "Election Day," votes received after that date should not be counted. As Beckwith explained, "This, of course, ignores the difference between casting a ballot and counting it." Currently, 29 states permit votes to be counted when they arrive after Election Day, as long as they were first sent prior to the day, with such laws typically requiring a postmark. Beckwith noted that the principle is the same as voters being allowed to cast a ballot if they arrive at a polling place on time, but are stuck in a long line for hours on end.

"Today’s GOP is just willing to sacrifice military voters’ ability to cast a ballot easily in a quest to make it harder for everyone to vote, by mail or otherwise," Beckwith concluded. "As Republicans make their arguments to the highest court in the land, it’s worth remembering that not so long ago they argued that not counting military ballots would dishonor their service."

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