Vote Early, If You Still Haven't. But Please Calm Down.

The takeaway from WI, PA & NC voting rights decisions:

-Drop your ballot off instead of mailing it back

-Vote early if you can or on Election Day as last resort

-Don't give Trump the chance to challenge late-arriving ballots or weaponize vote counts

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) October 29, 2020

And yes, by now you should drop off your ballot, not mail it, wherever you are.

Trump will challenge "late arriving ballots," but there are challenges, and then there are challenges.

If you take Kavanaugh's "radical" position, ballots are not "late" if state law says they can still be counted. They will, of course, be counted according to the law of the state in which they are received.  But then there's all the military ballots from overseas.

Trump’s desire to declare victory based on Election Day results would disenfranchise tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of troops stationed abroad. @ProjectLincoln #LincolnVeteran @svdate https://t.co/LJNsKJyD5m

— Fred Wellman (@FPWellman) October 29, 2020

Who wants to be first to invalidate those?  And this is not an electoral college issue:  this is ballots, period.  Invalidate those, and lots of people on the ballots lose votes.  Not many politicians who want to back that strategy.

But that's if Trump raises a legal challenge.  What if he just complains on Twitter?  What then?

Well, odds are he's a lame duck at that point.  He can pry all the "B's" off the White House keyboards, for all the good tweets will do him.  Not much else he can do.  Lame ducks are not king-makers.  They are not party power bosses.  They got nothin'.  They're losers.  Period.  GOP office holders may want to continue to praise him, so they can stay in good with that mythical base of power he supposedly has; but how do you do that with a guy with no public office and who just lost the biggest prize in American politics?  How do they continue to court Trump's base when that's what cost them the White House and probably the Senate?

Trump is not going to "weaponize" anything after November 3.  Not even his Twitter account.