Trump may be disenfranchising his own voters

[Bloomberg]( Follow Us //link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/click/20845534.16245/aHR0cHM6Ly90d2l0dGVyLmNvbS9ib3Bpbmlvbg/57d8157f3f92a424d68d6450B7b10572e [Get the newsletter](hash=b9b2681361bede0e1069ca238efb1ec2) Get Jonathan Bernstein’s newsletter every morning in your inbox. [Click here to subscribe](hash=b9b2681361bede0e1069ca238efb1ec2). Could President Donald Trump accidentally be undermining Republican turnout? That’s something that experts such as political scientist Rick Hasen have been wondering [for months](, and now [Republican campaign operatives]( are [worried about it](. It’s pretty simple: Trump’s unrelenting — and unfounded — assault on the integrity of voting by mail may frighten Republicans who normally use that method and those who might turn to it because they fear catching the coronavirus at polling places. It’s possible those voters may skip the election altogether. In reality, normal vote-by-mail favors neither party; in fact, there’s another [study out this week]( showing that turnout increases modestly for both parties when mail-in ballots are available. Nor is widespread fraud a serious concern. Yes, it’s possible, but it’s [very rare](, and attempts to coordinate it on a large scale are [almost impossible to get away with](. As for Trump’s warnings that foreign nations could steal ballots out of mailboxes or print fake ones and send them in? No experts think such schemes could come close to working. (Seriously, stealing ballots out of mailboxes?) Trump and those echoing his message have never even explained why they think absentee voting is fine but vote-by-mail isn’t, given that the two methods are basically identical. Anyway, until Trump came along, state governments dominated by Democrats (such as California and Oregon) and Republicans (Utah and Arizona) have been equally likely to move toward conducting elections mainly by mail in recent years. Lots of Republicans use mail voting in normal elections, and presumably a lot more would do so in 2020. But if Trump and Fox News and the rest of the conservative information loop convince Republicans to abandon mail-in ballots, that could harm the party in two ways. Some voters may decide to sit out the election. Others might flood in-person polling places in a year in which there’s already expected to be a shortage of poll workers and fewer voting locations. It’s possible that the result could be long lines in Republican areas, with some voters deciding that the wait isn’t worth it. My guess is that Republicans won’t lose a significant number of votes this way, but I can’t blame party professionals for being concerned about it. The sad part is how pointless all this is. There’s no reason to expect that Trump’s push to make vote-by-mail a little bit harder will help him or his party. And while we can expect Trump to cry fraud after the election — after all, he did so in 2016 after an election that he won — I find it hard to believe there’s anyone who would believe such accusations only if the president spends months spinning fantasies beforehand. So to summarize, Trump is making it a bit harder for a lot of people to vote, scaring some of his own supporters for no reason and risking the possibility that this effort will in fact depress Republican turnout. Oh — and he’s weakening American democracy by undermining everyone’s trust in the integrity of elections. Perhaps the president should be concerned about that. 1. Olivia Quinn, Amanda Brush and Eric R. A. N. Smith at the Monkey Cage with a [forecast of the 2020 elections](. I’m going to keep saying this: Models based on fundamentals need to be taken with several grains of salt this year, because the circumstances are just very different. 2. Dan Drezner on how [things could get worse for Trump](. Yup. I’d say that it’s also possible that he could lose more ground without anything else going wrong; after all, the trend is still going in that direction, and there’s no reason to be confident that he isn’t still shedding support. He could regain some of his lost ground, but it’s just as likely he still has farther to sink. 3. I do think, however, that Stuart Rothenberg is correct that Republican politicians and campaign operatives are very [unlikely to desert Trump](. 4. Sarah A. Seo and Daniel Richman on [federalism and police reform](. 5. Jamelle Bouie on [Trump’s culture war](. 6. Reid Wilson on the U.S. [withdrawal from the World Health Organization](. 7. David Graham makes a good point on the [Paycheck Protection Program](. 8. And my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Conor Sen on the [need for more stimulus](. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. [Click here to subscribe](hash=b9b2681361bede0e1069ca238efb1ec2). Also subscribe to [Bloomberg All Access]( and get much, much more. 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