How Trump and the GOP cheated again in the 2024 election

Campaign against legal mail-in balloting was key, amid bomb threats, suppression tactics

In April 2020, Donald Trump was flustered. He wasn’t dealing well with the COVID-19 pandemic, the death toll rising faster than his temper. He particularly didn’t like bills proposed in Congress by Democrats to expand mail-in balloting during the 2020 election so fewer people would have to stand in line at polls and be exposed to a deadly virus.

Trump unloaded during one of his Fox and Friends media sessions. Democrats, he proclaimed, have “a level of [mail-in] voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

In the months ahead, he implemented the Trump’s mirror tactic of accusing the other side of doing what you do, claiming Democrats were cheating without evidence. At the Republican National Convention in August, Trump exclaimed, “The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election.”

Key Trump allies joined the chorus. Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, one of the founding members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, was one of the most fervent advocates of voter suppression in Congress. During an August 2020 hearing, Jordan accused Democrats of “wanting chaos and confusion” by counting mail-in ballots after Election Day. Republicans in states such as Pennsylvania declined to allow mail and other early ballots to be…