Opinion: US 2020 election is all about who gets to vote

Editor’s note: The opinions in this article are the author’s, as published by our content partner, and do not represent the views of MSN or Microsoft. In Florida, a federal judge dealt Republicans a dramatic setback in their effort to keep people with felony convictions from registering to vote. In 2018, voters in the state overwhelmingly passed a ballot initiative allowing those who had served their time to have their voting rightsrestored. Republicans in the state legislature then passed a law requiring them to pay all fines, fees and restitution before being allowed to vote (but giving them no way of findingoutwhat they owe). Video: How to win a US election (Sky News) And of course, President Trump has continued his crusade against voting by mail, filled with his usual mix of paranoia and lies: This, of course, is not the first time Trump has declared that an election is illegitimate and fraudulent if he doesn’t win. Of course, when Trump talks about voter fraud, he presents it as something only Democrats engage in, even though the only recent major case of absentee ballot fraud involved a Republican consultant in North Carolina. Because mail voting will increase this year, it’s a handy tool for him to claim the election is illegitimate if he loses. One of the consequences is that counting the results will take substantially longer than usual, since mail-in ballots take more work to record than votes cast at polling places, where they are quickly read by machine and tallied. In the key swing state of Pennsylvania, for instance, this is the first year they’re using no-excuse absentee voting, so election officials will be dealing with more mail ballots than they ever have before. Gallery: Trump presidency in photos (USA Today) And then, if former vice president Joe Biden is declared the winner, we can be sure the Republican Party will file lawsuits seeking to have the results overturned. Even if those attempts fail and Biden becomes president next January, many Republicans will almost certainly be completely convinced that the election was stolen.

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