By John R. Puri
Thursday, August 21, 2025
From the Washington Post editorial board today, in
response to Trump’s call to ban mail-in voting nationwide: “Everyone loses when the federal government runs elections.”
Oh, really? Do they now?
Hey, remember the obnoxiously named For the People Act
from a few years ago? The one that would have federalized state election
procedures?
From the Washington Post editorial board in March
2021, commenting on that partisan Democratic bill championed by President
Biden: “Republicans’ rhetoric on H.R. 1 is apocalyptic. Are they that
afraid of democracy?”
The condescension of that title ran throughout the
editorial:
Conservatives complain that the
bill would mandate early voting, no-excuse absentee voting, provisional ballots
for people who accidentally vote out-of-precinct, same-day voter registration
and automatic voter registration. So? There is nothing scary or even unusual
about these reforms, which many states have embraced without seeing the
pervasive fraud Republicans predict and claim falsely has occurred.
Opponents argue that counting
mail-in ballots that arrive in the days after Election Day, as long as they are
mailed on time, would produce uncertainty about the results on election night.
Big deal. It is far more important to count Americans’ votes, even if the U.S.
Postal Service delays their delivery, than it is to soothe impatient election
night viewers.
Critics also warn that state
legislatures would have to turn over congressional district map-drawing to
independent commissions. And? Extreme partisan gerrymandering makes the need
for nonpartisan redistricting, which has worked in state after state that has
tried it, more acute.
So, back in 2021, Republicans were concerned that putting
the federal government in charge of election rules across the country may be a
bad idea. The Washington Post replied, “So?” “And?” “Big deal.” Now, it
informs us that “everyone loses when the federal government runs elections.” I
suppose that the For the People Act wasn’t as flatly unobjectionable as the Post
thought it was.
Just one puzzling mystery remains: What could have
changed between 2021 and 2025 that caused the Washington Post editorial
board to undergo this incredible change of heart . . . ?
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