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And yeah, structurally and functionally, "republicans" acts in bad faith. But "republicans" aren't a single entity that acts. For almost all individuals involved, what it feels like is: In 2016, mail-in voting is something you just haven't thought about much. Maybe you've done it, maybe you haven't, but you don't have a strong opinion on 'is it secure or not'. It's reasonable to not oppose something you don't know much about. Then, post election, you start noticing that the Deep State and Mainstream Media really have it out for trump, they'll say anything so long as it makes him look bad, and they'll even break procedure and law to go after him. In 2020, you notice democratic organizations are trying to help orchestrate and "fortify" elections, a lot of laws are changing, and suddenly there's 10x more mail-in voting than there was last year - so you interpret that as action against trump. Now post-election, and there are so many reports of dead people voting, ballot harvesting ... And when you google 'mail-in voting concerns', there are all sorts of pre-2020 articles from mainstream media that are suspicious of mail-ins! And when you compare that to today's rhetoric, the "same people" are suddenly claiming that mail-in voting is safe and secure. The most secure election ever! It just adds up. How is it my fault I didn't oppose mail-ins before when they just weren't as important?
All that exposition is to emphasize that it doesn't take conscious bad faith to get into a position that reasons in an obviously motivated way. It just takes careless and motivated reasoning, something all sides have in spades. When there are bad-faith actors involved, they're mostly people like Trump or media figures who'll advance an argument that gets views even if they know it's bullshit - all of the individuals who consume news and debate it online believe it. But I think those people aren't necessary ingredients, and what happens is more like - someone who's a bit manic and mad that the dems lost trump does some bad statistics with voting numbers, a twitter user reads a bunch of old news articles and posts screenshots of their headlines, leading to rumble videos and substack post about the awful thing the democrats did this time. And then credulous intermediaries excitedly consume those, believe them, and repost them to their followers. You could argue the intermediaries are being dishonest by not checking what they repost for accuracy ... but a more parsimonious explanation is they believe it as much as their followers do.
So the convenient changes in position come more from poor reasoning distributed across social networks than it does intentional bad faith.
I could buy that argument if it actually comported with the facts on the ground, but it doesn't. I live in Pennsylvania. In October 2019 the state passed a law authorizing mail-in voting. How many Republicans voted against it? Not a single one. Not Doug Mastriano, not all the other MAGA wannabes of whom there was no shortage of at that time. And the law was fairly big news at the time, and it was controversial. But the controversy came from a few urban Democrats who didn't like that it did away with straight ticket voting. Even in 2020, when the pandemic first hit and states were changing their laws, there was no clear partisan angle. The idea that the 2020 election was somehow affected by last-minute changes is one of the most pervasive pieces of misinformation out there, because it has enough of a grain of truth in it to make people accept it uncritically without considering the full implications. Yes, some states made last-minute changes to their laws. But the states that were at issue in the presidential election had already passed mail-in voting laws prior to the pandemic, and, other than Pennsylvania, had already conducted elections by mail. Some states changed the rules in 2020, but several of them did so through legislative action, which is no different than how laws are ordinarily passed. That leaves the states where mail voting was expanded by executive action, whether by the governor or the state board of elections. What states were these? Arkansas, Alabama, Kentucky, New Hampshire, and West Virginia. The only one of those that is close to being a swing state is New Hampshire, and it has a Republican governor. Kentucky has a Democratic governor, but no one is confusing it for a blue state. The rest are all as deep red as you can get. The point is that, as late as the spring of 2020, a lot of Republicans though expanding mail voting on short notice was a good idea. Then as soon as Trump starts running his mouth in the summer, every Republican who matters falls in line and talks about how this is suddenly a great security risk, as though The Donald was the only one wise enough to notice these problems. Sorry if I don't buy it.
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