Mailing it in is one thing Colorado does well. When it comes to mail-in ballots, a recent hot topic for President Donald Trump, Colorado is a mile higher than most of our sister states.
Last week, Trump engaged in an inaccurate Tweetrum over Michigan’s plan to send out “absentee ballot applications.” He ignored the final word and jumped straight to a full-throated rant on the wrong subject, thereby tromping all over identical plans in red states such as Iowa, Georgia and Nebraska. In the midst of a health care crisis, these states have all decided it’s better to allow their citizens to vote from home.
But did we ever expect this president’s attention to reach that third word? I’m still a little surprised he understood the first two multi-syllable words: absentee ballot.
What he clearly doesn’t understand are the facts about absentee ballots. Or, if he does, like so many other objective truths, he ignores them simply because they don’t fit his re-election strategy. Whipping up fear and anxiety among his supporters has the two-fold benefit of increasing their engagement and distracting others from more substantive national matters.
The overwhelming and objective evidence, much of it based on our state’s own experience, demonstrates that mail balloting is a significant benefit to our democratic society.
