FL, NC GOP Blurring Out Part of Trump Conspiracy Tweet About Mail-In Voting In Their Absentee Ballot GOTV Campaigns
Photo credit: Justin King (@JustinforJoCo)
The Florida and North Carolina Republican Party are now blurring out part of an anti-mail-in vote conspiracy tweet from President Donald Trump in their get-out-the-vote campaigns to increase absentee voting.
Trump has repeatedly made baseless claims about the risk of fraud from mail-in voting, even prompting Twitter to tag one of his tweets from earlier this summer as misinformation. Trump’s claims have been routinely debunked and he has also voted via mail himself even as he calls the process “corrupt.”
Trump’s full tweet from July 10 reads, “Absentee Ballots are fine. because you have to go through a precise process to get your voting privilege. Not so with Mail-Ins. Rigged Election!!! 20% fraudulent ballots?”
….Absentee Ballots are fine because you have to go through a precise process to get your voting privilege. Not so with Mail-Ins. Rigged Election!!! 20% fraudulent ballots?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 10, 2020
However, in the mailers encouraging absentee ballots being sent by the North Carolina GOP, the party has digitally rendered the second half of that tweet – ranting about mail-in voting — illegible.
Sharp-eyed political observers caught the doctoring of the Trump tweet and snarkily called out that state’s parsing of the president’s message.
Justin King, who is from North Carolina, received the same promotional materials to promote voting for Trump in the 2020 election, he tweeted Wednesday night.
I guess it’s okay to vote by mail absentee after all in North Carolina @BowTiePolitics pic.twitter.com/aBesZZ3xX7
— Justin King (@JustinforJoCo) July 23, 2020
So NC GOP is taking the same approach that the FL GOP took in blurring out the President’s tweet about “Not so with Mail-Ins.” in sending absentee by *MAIL* ballot request forms (“applications”).
FL Story via @politico: https://t.co/JN0K6bndTo#ncpol https://t.co/JudBqoiiqm pic.twitter.com/Wqj8OwHCbn
— Michael Bitzer, Ph.D. (@BowTiePolitics) July 23, 2020
Politico first reported on similar mailers in Florida last week, where Florida’s GOP Chair Joe Gruters admitted blurring the tweet intentionally to “[highlight] the portion of the tweet that is relevant to Florida.” He also said Trump equates mail-in voting to “an all-mail election to which the RPOF and President Trump remain staunchly opposed to.”
This is not the first time state Republican parties have had to delicately navigate around Trump’s false, conspiratorial claims about voting by mail. In April, the Pennsylvania GOP urged voters to “protect yourself from large crowds” by using mail-in voting even as the president was slamming the practice as ripe for fraud.
