Republicans Are ‘Engineering an Electoral Disaster,’ Washington Post Editorial Board Warns

The Republican Party is seeking to take advantage of changes in the voting process and the uncertainty brought on by the coronavirus pandemic to obtain favorable results at the ballot box in November, the Washington Post editorial board warned Wednesday.

The paper cited the difficulties with Georgia’s primary on Tuesday, which included long lines, unfamiliar voting machines, new sanitation procedures and insufficiently staffed polling locations. These factors appeared to disproportionately affect minority communities.

“Georgia’s experience confirmed that the coronavirus pandemic, combined with the sort of Election Day incompetence that has for years been a sad fixture of American democracy, threatens the integrity of the November presidential election,” the board wrote.

“Unfortunately, many Republican politicians continue to manipulate voting rules for partisan advantage, exploiting the pandemic as an opportunity to suppress voting.”

The Post highlighted efforts by Republican lawmakers in Iowa to push through a bill to prevent sending absentee ballot applications to voters who have not requested them. This came on the heels of the state seeing a massive turnout for its primary last week, due in large part to every voter receiving an absentee ballot application.

“If Republicans fear that more people voting hurts them — and President Trump has explicitly said this is the case — the honorable response is to change their candidates or their policies,” the board concluded. “Instead, the party seeks to impose more electoral disasters on people who should feel nothing but fed up.”