I recently received a mailer from a conservative super PAC that read "CONSERVATIVE VOTER ALERT … YOU'RE ELIGIBLE TO VOTE ABSENTEE … IT'S SAFE AND SECURE."

The irony should be obvious. But it points to a real problem for Republicans.

The damage President Donald Trump did to mail-in voting's reputation among Republicans in 2020 is still hurting the party's electoral prospects today. It's even siphoning money that could be spent far more productively on the campaign trail.

Trump undermines vote by mail's credibility among Republicans

Before 2020, researchers found that voting by mail didn't noticeably advantage either party. Republicans already harbored some distrust of it, rooted partly in long-standing claims about illegal immigrants voting ‒ but that distrust wasn't moving election results until Trump saw an opening and exploited it for his own benefit.

Then, the partisan divide opened up fast. Part of it was COVID-19: Republicans were simply less worried about catching the coronavirus at a polling place, while many Democrats avoided in-person voting. But Trump's rhetoric is what turned a gap into a chasm.

"There's fraud. They found them in creeks. They found some with the name Trump, just happened to........

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