Absentee ballot requests...with Trump’s puss on them??

Thomas Veil

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Okay, somebody explain this.

Voters in North Carolina have received absentee ballot request forms in the mail with Trump's face on them

Given the crisis facing the United States Postal Service before a presidential election, the last thing John Herter expected to receive in the mail Saturday was an absentee ballot request form with President Donald Trump's face on it.

"Is this a joke?" Herter said his wife told him as she opened up the mailer to reveal a photo of Trump grinning underneath the words, "Are you going to let the Democrats silence you? Act now to stand with President Trump."

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Lostngone

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However I seriously doubt President Trump knew anything about this mailer before it got sent out. However it still seems pretty funny if it wasn’t confirmed that it was the Republicans that sent it out it almost looks like someone was trying to orchestrate an epic troll...
 

Thomas Veil

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The Trump campaign itself says it had some hand in it.

The Trump campaign said the mailer shows how it "is working to ensure voters in every state know how their state's sorting system works so that every eligible voter can cast their ballot and have their vote counted," Thea McDonald, deputy national press secretary, told CNN over email after she was shown the mailer.

Later in the story we read...

The mailer was sent out by the North Carolina Republican Party, press secretary Tim Wigginton told CNN.

Whether those two statements contradict each other or go hand in hand is unclear.

Not to mention, how is this even legal?
 

lizkat

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It wouldn't possibly be legal if only Trump's campaign had a hand in it since election details are state issues... but not sure it's ok even at state level if only one party packages the material. It's a campaign mailing, period.
 

yaxomoxay

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It wouldn't possibly be legal if only Trump's campaign had a hand in it since election details are state issues... but not sure it's ok even at state level if only one party packages the material. It's a campaign mailing, period.

What’s illegal?
The campaign mailed a form, which is not forbidden. They packaged it with other BS, but ultimately they mailed the form and they didn’t change any information on the form.
I don’t like this tactics but it’s certainly not illegal.
 

lizkat

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What’s illegal?
The campaign mailed a form, which is not forbidden. They packaged it with other BS, but ultimately they mailed the form and they didn’t change any information on the form.
I don’t like this tactics but it’s certainly not illegal.

Are you sure about that? It's not the same thing at all as Trump mailing out those letters with the stimulus checks or after the fact of direct deposits of the stimulus amounts earlier this year. That was a partisan gimmick by an administration known for essentially staying in campaign mode all this time. And yeah who's going to get out in the weeds on the merits of taxpayers shelling out for a letter which ran along lines of "I signed the bill that made this possible and now I've signed the check I want you to have." We are so weary of his BS and at that point all anyone wanted to know was if the money cleared into our account yet.

But election administration details all belong to the states. The states get to say what can and can't be done about "electioneering" and so forth. Every state has their own laws about when and where campaign activity must cease, for instance. Some let you hand out cribsheets and candidate cards at the very door to the polling places, others say you have to be 100 feet away etc.

I sure don't know North Carolina's laws regarding political campaigning much less regarding mailing of official state documents related to voting.
 
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yaxomoxay

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That was a partisan gimmick

Undeniable!

But election administration details all belong to the states. The states get to say what can and can't be done about "electioneering" and so forth. Every state has their own laws about when and where campaign activity must cease, for instance. Some let you hand out cribsheets and candidate cards at the very door to the polling places, others say you have to be 100 feet away etc.
I sure don't know North Carolina's laws regarding political campaigning much less regarding mailing of official state documents related to voting.

I am pretty confident that no state has rules that truly limit who and how forms can be handed to individuals. As long as the form (and mailing label etc) is not modified, anything goes. That's why you can find voter registration cards in the most disparate places (including the offices of political campaigns), or online, etc. You can send the form to whoever you want, attaching to it the papers you want. As long as the form (the actual gov't document) is not modified, you're good. Again, not that I like this crap.
 

lizkat

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As long as the form (the actual gov't document) is not modified, you're good.

You're probably right. Having an official state voter reggie form inside a campaign office or at a street-side table run by a partisan group is not illegal anywhere as far as I know, even if in a lot of states the Rs have tried to keep them out of supposedly neutral places like Motor Vehicle offices lol.

And all that's different in this NC case is that the campaign "office" happens to be a mailed container.
 

yaxomoxay

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And all that's different in this NC case is that the campaign "office" happens to be a mailed container.

You're totally free to include the form wherever you want. You can mail it inside Trump's sister book. It doesn't matter. As long as the form is valid, that's what matters. It's an unsubmitted form, until it's written upon and sent to the authorities - and as long as you don't mislead people in thinking that it's something else - it has the same value of toilet paper (in pre-Covid value).
 
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