Trump Says He Will Vote by Absentee Ballot: Campaign Update

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Ryan Beckwith
Written by

Ryan Beckwith

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(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump says he will vote by absentee ballot in November. The number of lawsuits about voting procedures in November keeps growing. And a Facebook ad from Trump's campaign targets a different set of states.

There are 95 days until the election.

Other Developments:

Trump Says He Will Vote by Absentee Ballot

Trump said Friday that he will vote by absentee ballot in November, just one day after questioning whether the election should be delayed because of problems with voting by mail.

Speaking to reporters, the president urged Republican voters to cast absentee ballots, saying that he would do so with his own ballot. “Absentee ballots are a great thing,” he said.

At the same time, he argued that vote-by-mail is a “disaster.”

In recent remarks, the president has sought to draw a distinction between vote-by-mail, in which any voter can request and send in a ballot, and absentee voting, the traditional term for mail-in voting. In practice, there is little distinction. In Florida, where Trump will vote, the term “absentee ballot” was replaced by “vote-by-mail ballot” in state statutes in 2016, since voters are no longer required to have an excuse (such as being “absent” on Election Day).

Number of Election-Related Lawsuits Keeps Growing (9:13 a.m.)

The number of lawsuits related to voting in November keeps growing, as the most-litigated election in history approaches.

According to a tally kept by Loyola Marymount University law professor Justin Levitt, there are now 170 lawsuits in 41 states and the District of Columbia about voting during the coronavirus pandemic.

That tally does not include existing voting rights lawsuits that have been amended to include coronavirus-related arguments.

One of the most recent cases came in Rhode Island, where Common Cause and the League of Women Voters are seeking to scrap rules requiring witness and notary requirements on mail-in ballots.

Trump Facebook Ad Targets Different States (7:50 a.m.)

The Trump campaign is reaching out to voters in Ohio, Georgia and Texas, three states that haven't been considered battlegrounds in this election.

As part of a highly targeted, low-dollar ad campaign on Facebook, Trump is asking voters in five states and several major cities to respond to an online “Official Democrat Corruption Accountability Survey” in an ad featuring a close-up of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Trump Tailors Conflicting Ads to Black, White Audiences

But only Arizona and Florida are among the six battleground states that have received the most attention so far.

In the RealClearPolitics averages of state polls, Democratic nominee Joe Biden is narrowly ahead of Trump in Ohio, and Trump is narrowly ahead in Georgia, while the two are essentially tied in Texas.

As in 2016, the Trump campaign is using micro-targeting on Facebook to raise money, amplify their message and motivate supporters, and online “polls” long have been used to harvest emails and phone numbers for follow-up messaging.

Virginia May No Longer Be a Swing State (6:35 a.m.)

Virginia spent 40 years as a reliably red state, then 12 years as a swing state. But the latest polling puts it in Biden's column.

In a July Commonwealth Poll released Thursday, 50% of likely voters said they support Biden, while 39% said they back Trump.

That 11-point margin is roughly double the 5.3-point margin by which Hillary Clinton won the state in 2016, when she picked popular Virginia governor-turned senator Tim Kaine as her running mate.

The survey of 725 likely voters in Virginia was conducted July 11-19. It had a margin of error of plus-or-minus 6.4 points.

Federalist Society Co-Founder Blasts Trump's ‘Fascistic' Tweet

Federalist Society co-founder Steven Calabresi voted for Trump, argued that special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference was unconstitutional and opposed impeachment.

But he said Trump's tweet Thursday about delaying the election was “fascistic” and grounds for the president's removal from office.

“Until recently, I had taken as political hyperbole the Democrats' assertion that President Trump is a fascist,” he wrote in a New York Times op-ed posted Thursday afternoon. “But this latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president's immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate.”

A law professor at Northwestern University, Calabresi has conservative credentials. He founded one of the original chapters of the Federalist Society in college, clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and served under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

The Federalist Society has a prominent role in conservative politics. Trump and other Republican presidents have relied on the group to recommend nominees for the Supreme Court and other judiciary posts.