As of Thursday morning, about 1.3 million registered Democrats had requested and been approved for mail ballots for the June 2 primary election, compared with about 524,000 Republicans. Republicans made just 29% of the requests, even though they represent 38% of registered voters in the state and 45% of those registered with either major party.
“I must tell you that locally, in my county, we’re not advocating and we’re not pushing the mail–in voting,” said Lee Snover, chairwoman of the Northampton County GOP. “We’re concerned about fraud. We’re not happy with the process. Trump has sent the message out there that he’s concerned about it as well….
Northampton County, about 80 miles northwest of Philadelphia, was one of three in the state that voted twice for Barack Obama before backing Trump.
“Our county kind of is a Trump county. We’re kind of listening to Trump on this,” Snover said. “He’s spoken about it. He’s tweeted about it. He doesn’t want us to do it.”
Snover said “more than one person” has told her that “Trump doesn’t want us mailing in, [so] I’m not mailing it in.”
The data and anecdotal reports like Snover’s show that Trump’s rhetorical war against voting by mail is turning into a high-stakes bet that enough of his supporters will show up at the polls during a pandemic to propel the president in a key battleground state he won by less than 1 percentage point in 2016.