All Bark and No Bite: How Trump Might Be Planning to Use the Mail-In Ballot System to His Advantage

Conventional wisdom holds that Trump wants to stop the election from being held with mail-in ballots. That would make sense, considering his consistent and emphatic disparaging of their efficacy and legitimacy. However, two things suggest the Trump Campaign might be playing the long game over the mail-in ballots: Blue Shift, and the lessons learned from the traumatic Bush v Gore election.

Let me explain. In a myriad of press briefings and public statements, President Trump has outright insulted mail-in voting, and stirred up media attention over it consistently for several weeks now. The effect of this has been his base passionately adopting an anti mail-in voting stance, and beginning to doubt the legitimacy of the system. On the flip side, it has also caused democrats to double down on mail-in, and likely convinced more of them of its virtues since Postmaster General Louis DeJoy recently reassured congress USPS could handle the election.

Mail-In Ballot Being Deposited

The effect this will likely have is to cause more Republicans and Trump voters to show up en masse to physical polling locations on election day, and more democrats to mail-in their votes. What this could and likely will do is amplify a phenomenon known as "Blue Shift", where an election shifts towards the Democrats column after the initial voting is over, due to the counting of mail-in ballots.

In 2018, post-election day blue shift flipped several Republican wins into the Dem Column, and while "Blue Shift" typically serves to benefit Democrats, it may be seriously detrimental to their cause come November. Why?

Well, blue shift occasionally takes weeks to fully flip a race, as ballots are received and counted in the days and weeks after election day. When you consider that the 2018 elections saw only hardly a fraction of the number of people who will may be voting by mail this year, it means the full counting of these ballots post-election day may not finish in time for the Electoral College on December 14th, or even the last day of counting votes (as constitutionally mandated) on December 8th. The same reason the Florida recount was stopped on the 12th in Bush v Gore.

Joe Biden Tweets About Vote By Mail

The result of this? The count could be far from finished by the 8th, and millions of blue votes could go uncounted due to the sheer number of people voting by mail, while red votes could be drastically over-represented by showing up, by and large, to vote on election day in person.

This could flip key swing states away from the Biden column, and deliver a swift victory to President Trump. So does President Trump want to stop mail-in voting? Maybe not, because he may well be banking on a majority of Democrats mailing in to overwhelm the system, and a majority of the Republicans showing up to the polls. Maybe his rhetoric on Mail-In Ballots is all bark, no bite.