Donald Trump has inexplicably reversed course from his years of previous remarks disparaging the electoral system and now supports mail-in and early voting.
“Mail voting, early voting, and Election Day voting are all good options,” the former president wrote on Truth Social Friday afternoon. “Republicans need to make a plan, register and vote!”
Trump’s representatives responded to a request for comment from Business Insider, saying his Friday statement “speaks for itself,” and declined to answer further questions.
The latest remarks are a decisive departure from the rhetoric adopted by Trump over much of the past decade, in which he repeatedly claimed the election system was rigged and riddled with fraud. The former president even supported lawsuits aimed at ending the practice of mail-in voting in seven states.
Although “mail-in voting” and “mail-in voting” are terms often used interchangeably, there are minor differences in the procedures of each system. Most states that allow mail voting require voters to request a ballot before the election, with some requiring a reason why they will not be able to vote in person on election day, while states with Mail-in voting systems proactively send ballots to registered voters. .
Only eight states allow all elections to be conducted entirely through mail-in voting systems. Absentee and mail-in voting systems allow voters to send their ballots via the U.S. Postal Service.
Trump has previously targeted “mail-in ballots,” saying their widespread use in 2020 would lead to “the most rigged election in our country’s history,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
Special Counsel Jack Smith, in his effort to prove that Trump attempted to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election, pointed to social media posts dating back to 2012 – in which Trump claimed without evidence that voting machines had changed ballots cast for candidate Mitt Romney into votes. for then-candidate Barack Obama – as evidence that Trump intentionally “sowed distrust in the results of the presidential election” for years.
Nicholas Grossman, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Illinois, told Business Insider that Trump was unlikely to maintain his new stance in favor of mail-in and early voting. He added that Truth Social’s post sounds like a statement a Republican official or campaign staffer would encourage Trump to issue to build enthusiasm for the upcoming election.
CNN reported that leading Republicans recently embraced early and mail-in voting — and Trump could follow suit in an effort to get the highest turnout in this year’s election.
But even if Trump suddenly changed his mind, Grossman said, it would be too late to undo the damage he has done by sowing doubt in the election system. Trump’s most ardent supporters, Grossman noted, are not likely to suddenly have confidence in our election procedures just because Trump changed his messaging on the subject a few months before the election.
“Because conspiracy theories have thrived in part because of Trump, but also in many media outlets over the last decade, this damage is, to some extent, permanent,” Grossman told Business Insider. “And even despite this latest statement, he continues to cast doubt on the election in general. This has been his rhetoric for years at this point: trying to undermine democracy and especially to undermine Americans’ confidence in the democratic system. “
“If Trump loses, he will lie like he did in 2020. And if he wins, he will probably lie again – like he did in 2016 when he claimed millions of people voted illegally in California and that he actually won California,” Grossman added, “Even winning the election, he couldn’t stop himself from lying like that, so I hope he does it again. “
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