May 4, 2021

The on-screen graphic during The Rachel Maddow show Monday night says it all: "Oops."

Florida Republican legislators were in a huge rush to cut off vote by mail and early voting so that THOSE voters (Democrats) wouldn't have access to the ballot.

NOW they're worried they may have gone so far with their blatant voter suppression, that some, or perhaps many, of their own voters, Republicans, may have gotten caught in their trap.

Of course the elderly appreciate absentee voting and vote by mail. So do people who travel frequently. So do those serving in the military. These folks are frequently Republicans.

Amy Gardner in The Washington Post reports that there is "a long and fruitful relationship between the GOP and absentee voting."

Republican campaigns invested millions of dollars encouraging their supporters to cast ballots by mail. State legislators passed laws making it easier. Over the ensuing decades, GOP voters in Florida became so comfortable with casting ballots by mail that in 2020, nearly 35 percent of those who turned out did so, according to state data compiled by University of Florida political science professor Daniel A. Smith.

Virtually every narrow Republican victor of the past generation — and there have been many, including two of the state’s current top officeholders, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Rick Scott — owes their victory, at least in part, to mail voting.

Now, some Florida Republicans are reacting with alarm after the GOP-dominated state legislature, with DeSantis’s support, passed a far-reaching bill Thursday night that puts new restrictions on the use of mail ballots.

Gardner joined Rachel Maddow on Monday's show, and pointed out that all of the voter suppression laws have an audience of you-know-who:

"I think the passage of the bill reflects the bind that lots of Republicans and lots of state houses are in around the country, that they are under tremendous pressure to show their loyalty to President Trump and to say the election was stolen, even though many of them privately believe Joe Biden won the election fairly. So there is a huge pressure to pass these laws that in a lot of cases, both Republicans and Democrats describe as a solution without a problem. States like Florida where even DeSantis widely hailed the 2020 election as the gold standard for the election administration in America. So I don't think there's regret about doing what they felt they had to do by passing the bill. They felt they had to please Mr. Trump's constituents and the audience of one, meaning President Trump."

Trump continues to destroy the Republican Party. Oops is right.

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