August 12, 2024 11:42 AM UTC

Trump Trips Up His Own Campaign Bashing Colorado's Mail Ballots

• 3 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

On Saturday, ex-President Donald Trump dipped into and out of Aspen for a fundraiser hosted by a group of typically Aspen ultra-rich types at a location outside the town mere mortals were not allowed anywhere near. There were reportedly a few small groups of both protesters and supporters along the road from Pitkin County Airport, but nothing that slowed Trump on his way to collecting a claimed $28 million.

Although Trump wasn’t in Colorado for very long this weekend, he did find a moment to comment on the experience, which even on Trump’s very generous curve of excused falsity stands out:

Great visit to Montana and Wyoming, where I am leading BIG, and Colorado, whose Radical Left Governor has gone to all Mail-In Voting, making the State a POLITICAL CESSPOOL where, even if you were leading, it would make no difference!

It’s not the first time you’ve heard this about a statement made by the former President, but there are so many falsehoods packed into this single sentence that it’s difficult to know where to begin. Here’s 9NEWS’ Kyle Clark setting the record straight on Colorado’s mail ballot system, which has been in place for over a decade and administered by Secretaries of State from both parties:

The first election conducted after Colorado instituted all-mail ballots was in 2014, which was not a particularly auspicious election cycle for Democrats in Colorado as Cory Gardner won a U.S. Senate seat and John Hickenlooper was re-elected governor by a narrower-than-expected margin. Since then, it’s true that Democrats have generally run up the score in elections starting in 2016, but backlash against Trump and the radicalizing local Republican Party explains this evolution better than the method of voting. Notwithstanding Trump’s attacks on mail ballots as part of his false case that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, Republicans who decide to utilize mail ballots and early voting as part of their strategy quickly discover that they can still win elections just fine.

And this is where Trump’s attacks on Colorado’s mail ballots become, or at least could become, a serious problem for his campaign: Republicans including Trump’s own daughter-in-law RNC chair Lara Trump have started to embrace mail ballots even while ex-President Trump continues to bash them. AP’s Nick Riccardi reported on this change of strategy back in May:

Republicans once were at least as likely as Democrats to vote by mail, but Trump changed the dynamics in 2020. He preemptively began to argue that mail balloting was bad months before voting began in the presidential race.

That alarmed GOP strategists who saw mail voting as an advantage in campaigns because it lets them “bank” unreliable votes before Election Day and lowers the risk of turnout plummeting because of bad weather or other unpredictable factors at the polls. Trump’s own campaign tried to sell Republicans on casting ballots by mail, but his voters listened to the then-president. In 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Democrats were vastly more likely to cast ballots by mail than Republicans…

This time, Republicans say they’re not going to risk leaving ballots behind. [Pols emphasis] Trump’s handpicked chair of the Republican National Committee, his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, has vowed to embrace all sorts of legal election methods to boost turnout that Trump falsely blamed for his 2020 loss, including so-called “ballot harvesting” — letting people turn in mail ballots on the behalf of other voters.

On the one hand, Trump’s continued bashing of mail ballots is a political obligation, since he relies on the false mythology around mail ballots to maintain the fictional pretense that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. The problem for Trump is that relitigating the 2020 election will not help him win the 2024 election, and in 2024 if Trump wants to win he should be listening to his daughter-in-law and telling his voters to get out the vote by every lawful means. This is likewise a problem for every Republican candidate running for office in Colorado, who must now overcome the doubt sown by Trump in Colorado’s election system in order to turn out their own base.

Although Trump says the election in Colorado is stacked against him due to mail-in ballots, there is a ray of hope:

Colorado is run by the Lunatic Left that led the effort, overturned by the United States Supreme Court, to keep me off the ballot. For that reason alone, Colorado will have A BIG TRUMP VOTE!

Back in reality, a solid majority of Coloradans approved of throwing Trump off the ballot under the Constitution’s no-insurrectionists clause even if the Supreme Court decided states didn’t have that right. If anyone shows us a poll with Trump ahead in Colorado, which he never has been even in the worst of the season of doubt over Joe Biden, we’ll re-evaluate, but we don’t expect that will be necessary.

It’s clear that Trump wants to keep the imaginary specter of mail ballot fraud in his back pocket in case he needs it in November. But he does so at the expense of potentially hobbling the get-out-the-vote effort Trump needs if he actually wants to win. At some point before November, not just Trump but every Republican running where mail ballots are an option will need to pick a message and stick with it.