More than four million ballots were put in the mail less than one week ago and already nearly 300,000 Coloradans have cast their votes for the Nov. 3 election.
Rationale folk would call that a good start.
But this post is about the media.
Reporters nationwide and mail-in states like Colorado are going to have it rough over the next few week, getting tangled up and tripping over a narrative of their own making.
When President Trump questioned the reliability of the vote-by-mail system, it automatically signaled to the media that voting by mail must be foolproof, tamperproof, the greatest system in the world.
Then, when cracks in the perfect system appeared, the media accused Trump of taking a hammer to the wall.
So now their perfect system isn’t perfect and they’re not sure how to deal with that, except watch it like a hawk and question everything.
One of the top stories on the Denver Post reports “Denver police, postal officials investigating report of stolen mail as ballots drop.”
The Post spins it as news because some residents speculate on social media the target might have been ballots, as opposed to money, which has been the historical motivating factor for stealing mail for centuries.
Then there’s Kyle Clark.
He’s just a hot mess over everything.
What’s really interesting is the number of Republican ballots returned versus Democrat and independent voters.
This explanation is anecdotal, but it certainly makes sense.
For those excited about early leads in Dem ballot returns, don’t count your chickens. I asked a private FB group of 3,000 conservatives what the heck was going on and, overwhelmingly, they said they were waiting to vote in person bc they didn’t trust the process. #copolitics
— Michelle Lyng (@LyngMichelle) October 15, 2020