'Plan B': There may be a workaround to Trump's mail-in voting restrictions

From struggling against rising oil prices to reportedly being out of touch with the news cycle, President Donald Trump has his midterm election work cut out for him. To improve his chances of winning regardless of voters' wishes, Trump has tried to restrict mail-in voting. Now a new report reveals that Democrats in at least one state have plans to counter Trump's attempted meddling.

"New Mexico officials are talking to FedEx and UPS about using their companies to deliver mail ballots instead of the Postal Service, said Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver (D)," reported The Washington Post's Patrick Marley and Justin Jouvenal on Sunday. "The cost would be manageable because the state sends out a relatively small number of mail-in ballots, she said. 'We are still planning for plan B in a worst-case scenario,' she said. 'There are other ways to deliver ballots.'"

The Post earlier noted that so far Trump has so far found his voter suppression efforts stymied by lower courts, although the Supreme Court has occasionally bailed him out.

"A judge has blocked Trump’s plans for now in a legal fight that has made its way to the Supreme Court once and could soon be before the justices again," The Post wrote. "The Supreme Court could still upend mail ballot rules, but the president and the U.S. Postal Service are running out of options that don’t involve significant upheaval because tens of thousands of voters will be getting ballots in their mailboxes in the coming days."

The article noted that election officials in Wisconsin and North Carolina have already begun sending out mail-in ballots, despite the Trump administration's post office orders.

"Those ballots are getting placed in the mail under long-standing policies, not the new ones Trump has spent months trying to impose," The Post wrote. "Some officials said they wanted to mail ballots as soon as possible because they considered the new rules — which require new approvals and the use of technology that has not yet been deployed — impossible to follow."

It added, "'There’s no practical way for Wisconsin clerks to comply,' said Don Millis, chairman of Wisconsin’s elections board. Millis, a Republican who has helped oversee Wisconsin elections for years, said the president’s proposal would 'hurt the Republican turnout more than the Democratic turnout.'"

Talking to AlterNet in June, one election expert outlined the risks to democracy posed by Trump's voter suppression actions.

“What they all add up to is a desire to avoid any accountability to the voters in the midterm elections — to ensure, to preordain the outcome of a midterm that he thinks is going to go badly for him,” Dan Vicuña, Senior Policy Director for Voting and Fair Representation at Common Cause, said at the time. “We know, from the Big Lie of the 2020 election to spurring on a violent revolt to overthrow a free and fair election, that he has no respect for democratic norms, for the voice of the people. This is entirely about his own power and his own ego. He will even invest in protecting that ego and protecting his power at the expense of the needs of the public. People are suffering with high gas prices and affordability issues, and he does not care. All that matters is protecting his power, and he has no interest in whether he does that through democratic means.”

He added, “I think this all adds up to a desire to ensure that his party stays in power and his ability to do what he wants — to attack vulnerable communities — remains intact.”