Ives to Illinois’ Sixth: ‘No mail-in voting for you’

Illinois Sixth District Republican congressional candidate Jeanne Ives’ fundraising email blasting mail-in voting got way more publicity than intended. The Trib took umbrage that her communications director Kathleen Murphy included two sentences verbatim from a Trib article on concerns about mail-in voting to bolster Ives’s fear mongering that regardless of the pandemic, mail-in voting is a cynical Democratic exploitation of the crisis. Murphy admitted her error in not citing the Trib article but refused to say whether Ives approved the plagiarism or if she even saw the email.

Ives is taking her cue from President Trump and the Republican Party, that mail-in voting in a pandemic is a necessity that dare not speak its name. To be horrified by even the idea of mail-in voting when it may be required this November is utterly irresponsible. It has worked for years in Washington, Oregon, Utah, Colorado and Hawaii; and for early voting in 28 other states simply as an advancement in good electoral governance. If Ives wishes to get away with plagiarizing on mail-in voting, she should simply repeat verbatim her idealized president on Fox News: “If we have mail-in voting you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again”.