Everyone is going to tell you this story is about Donald Trump. Everyone is wrong, which is the only reason I get out of bed. This story is about the most beautiful plot twist of the decade: Democrats have finally stopped trusting the mail.
The Washington Post reports that Democrats are moving away from mail ballots and toward in-person voting and drop boxes. Michael McDonald, the University of Florida professor who tracks early voting, found mail ballot requests down from the last midterm in six of the eight states he analyzed. In Georgia, the Post reports, requests are down 40 percent, while in-person early voting is, in McDonald's words, "through the roof." CBS Atlanta puts the raw numbers at a little more than 160,000 absentee requests by Friday's deadline, compared with more than 285,000 in 2022.
NBC News found the drop is steepest in the most Democratic places. In Georgia precincts that went overwhelmingly for Kamala Harris, requests fell 52 percent. In Trump precincts, 39 percent. And according to Marist polling cited by NBC, Democrats' confidence that the Postal Service will deliver ballots on time fell from 86 percent before the 2024 election to 60 percent now.
Pause and savor that. For six years, anyone who raised an eyebrow at mail voting was told they were a threat to democracy, a conspiracy theorist and probably the type of person who owns a ham radio. The envelope was sacred. The mail carrier was a constitutional officer. Your ballot would travel through rain, sleet and a Cheesecake Factory parking lot and arrive pure as the driven snow.
Now plenty of those same believers have quietly walked to the polling place in person, holding their ballot the way you'd hold a baby during a bar fight.
The official explanation is that Democrats are worried about Trump's attacks on mail voting and about Postal Service delays. Fine. But do you hear what that means? The argument was never "the mail is safe." The argument was "the mail is safe when we like who runs the government." That's not a voting principle. That's a weather vane with a Senate caucus.
And here's where I part ways with my own side, because a crow has no side. Republicans should not be dancing about this. A Democrat who shows up in person, in Wisconsin, on day one, is not a voter you scared off. That's a motivated voter wearing comfortable shoes. The Post reports more than 55,000 Wisconsinites voted early in person on the first day, a 65 percent jump from four years ago. If you wanted fewer Democrats voting, congratulations: you invented a Democrat with a parking spot.
Meanwhile, nationally, McDonald counts more than 15 million early votes, with about 9.7 million by mail, including drop boxes, and 5.6 million in person. So mail is still winning. It's just that the people who called it a sacred trust are now the ones driving it to the drop box themselves, like a kid who won't let the babysitter handle his science project.
My recommendation to both parties is simple. Pick a position on the mail and keep it for more than one election cycle. Or don't, and let the rest of us enjoy the show. It's the only thing in politics that arrives on time.
This article is satire. The Demorat is a parody news site; real facts are drawn from the linked sources, and jokes, invented scenes, and fictional characters are not real.
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