Going through my 10/2020 exports on the election and some of the things I had discussed with regards to mail-in ballots, which I naively believed would benefit Republicans, and thought I’d offer this post-hoc thought on the topic.
I had expected mail-in ballots to backfire on Democrats due to signature verification rejection rate norms, the fact that Republicans traditionally prefer to vote in person, and the fact that Trump hammered into his supporters to avoid mail-in ballots, but we’ve since discovered that Democrats in big cities like Atlanta and Phoenix stopped verifying signatures, allowed blanks, scribbles, and duplicates to pass through unverified, sometimes multiple times, negating that advantage entirely, and opening up an advantage of their own.
Republicans need to be smarter about how this game is played.
Here’s one of the many times I mentioned this. We now know why Democrats weren’t concerned about signature verification rejection rates, they did think it through, and had a plan. Signatures weren’t a concern to them.