Despite President Trump’s lies and schemes, all Americans should be able to vote by mail

Just as California has been a model for the nation on gun safety, climate change and other vital issues, so too must it be a model for voting from home.

The stakes are nothing less than our democracy’s survival, as our lying president seeks to steal this election out from under us.

In the November 2018 election, 65% of Californians’ ballots were sent in by mail. In this year’s primary, just before our pandemic shelter-in-place orders began, that number rose to 72%. Some parts of California less affected by COVID-19 could allow for socially distanced and masked in-person voting in November, but other more heavily affected areas really can’t. No Californian — and no American for that matter — should have to risk his or her life, or their families’ lives, just to exercise the right to vote.

Accordingly, Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered that all registered voters will be sent a vote-from-home ballot for this November’s election. Voters must be registered at least 15 days before Election Day in order to receive one. Ballots will need to be postmarked by Election Day, but they’ll be counted if they arrive at a registrar within 17 days after the election. Final results in a few particularly close races may not be available on Election Day; it could take up to a few weeks. But that’s been the case in California and many other states for years, and it’s a tiny price to pay for guaranteeing voter access.

President Donald Trump and his craven enablers want to scare Americans into thinking this is some massive fraud risk, but that’s a straight-up lie. Evidence of voting fraud involving vote-from-home ballots is vanishingly rare, in fact, voting this way creates the paper trail that so many Americans desire in an age of heightened concern over potential hacking and manipulated tallies.

The fact is, Donald Trump opposes voting from home even though he and his family have done it in the past and already have requested ballots to do so again this year. That’s because he knows his already slim chance of a second term becomes even slimmer as more Americans cast ballots. That’s why he’s pulling out all the stops, not only lying with wild abandon about the security and safety of voting from home, but also actively sabotaging the U.S. Postal Service in order to throw more doubt and chaos into the process.

He doesn’t care that destroying the USPS also means hurting 330,000 veterans who get their prescriptions from the VA each day, seniors for whom the mail is a lifeline and businesses that depend on the mail to keep their operations running. All he cares about is winning, because never before have we had a president so likely to be criminally prosecuted once he leaves office.

He has a powerful motivation to do anything to hold on to power. And our time and opportunities to stop him are running out.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which became law in March, included $400 million in new Help America Vote Act emergency funds for states to prevent, prepare for and respond to the coronavirus for the 2020 federal election cycle. But we knew that was just a start, so the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act, provided $3.6 billion and additional voting rights protections.

We passed that bill three months ago. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — among President Trump’s top enablers — never allowed a vote on it and refused to start negotiations until Americans’ enhanced unemployment benefits were running out at the end of July. Just as with the crooked impeachment trial he ran, McConnell is making sure the fix is in.

So here we are fewer than 80 days before the election, still striving to ensure states have what they need to conduct safe, fair elections while also fending off Trump’s concerted effort to usher the Postal Service into an early and undeserved grave by withholding funding and having his postmaster general, a billionaire donor, eviscerate USPS’ personnel, equipment and logistics.

The House will return to Washington this Saturday to vote on legislation to fund the Postal Service and require it to maintain service and operations at the same level they were at on Jan. 1 of this year. And we’ve summoned Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and Postal Service Board of Governors Chairman Robert M. Duncan to testify on Monday.

But the president and the Senate must agree to a relief bill — if not the HEROES Act, then something that equally meets struggling Americans’ needs — including robust funding both for state elections agencies and for the Postal Service. We can’t let democracy wither on the vine.

California knows how to vote from home. It’s time for Senate Republicans and the president to do their constitutional duties so that the rest of the nation can do it, too.

This story was originally published August 21, 2020 at 5:00 AM.