The thinking among conservatives is that the left tries to make it unduly easy to vote in order to promote voter fraud and allow activists to vote on behalf of the unmotivated and uninformed. Mail-in voting is particularly susceptible to fraud, they say.

They also claim that states like Democratic-controlled California enacted so-called ballot harvesting laws, which allow organized workers or volunteers to collect absentee ballots from voters and deliver those ballots to a polling place, to make it easier for the votes of illegal aliens and those not interested in the political process to be cast.

Allowing people to vote for weeks before Election Day also makes it easier for fraud to be committed, they say.

Democrats and left-wing activists counter that everything should be done to encourage the maximum number of people to vote, and that Republican efforts to require voters to produce photo identification when voting are aimed at disenfranchising minorities and the poor for partisan advantage.

Fitton, of Judicial Watch, a conservative good-government nonprofit group based in the nation’s capital, argues that the left isn’t allowing the current virus-related crisis to go to waste.

“URGENT: Leftists using pretext of #CoronavirusOutbreak to push unsecure, ‘vote by mail’ free for all, no voter id anywhere for 2020 elections[,]” Fitton wrote on Twitter on March 18, appending the hashtag “#HowtoStealAnElection[.]”

Fitton’s tweet embedded a video clip of a speech he made at last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), in which he said “our republic is under assault at the ballot box.”

Prominent Democrats have been urging increased reliance on mail-in voting in light of the ongoing difficulties posed by the CCP virus.

Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Tom Perez told MSNBC on March 16 that states should allow residents to vote by mail in the remaining Democratic Party presidential primaries to contain the spread of the virus.

Asked if he supported “universal vote-by-mail adoption in the remaining primary states,” Perez answered, “Wherever practicable, and I think you can make this happen,” The New York Post reported.

Former Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said in a tweet March 18 that the CCP virus is giving greater urgency to calls to “make voting by mail the norm.”

“Congress needs to act to make voting by mail the norm going forward, with the specifics outlined by election expert Marc Elias below to make it accessible for all[,]” Clinton wrote.

Elias, an election lawyer who represents Democratic candidates, wrote on Twitter that there were four “Pillars to Safeguard Voting Rights with Vote by Mail.”

Postage should be “free or prepaid,” “Ballots postmarked by Election Day must count[,]” “Signature matching laws reformed to protect voters[,]” and “Community [organizations] can help collect & deliver voted, sealed ballots.”

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said March 18 that she was calling on her state’s lawmakers to allow all-mail-in elections in the months of August and November to deal with the problems created by the virus.

A day after former Vice President Joe Biden swept the Democratic primary in that state, Hobbs told lawmakers in a letter that “it would be unreasonable to ask these officials to once again overcome these circumstances, should they still exist or are exacerbated” if the deadly virus remains active during future election cycles.

She said county boards of supervisors should be authorized to allow all elections to be conducted only by way of mail-in voting, referring to a state law that she said allows it.

Electoral-integrity expert J. Christian Adams told The Epoch Times that this political push is “horrible” and “the worst ever.” Adams is president of the Indianapolis-based Public Interest Legal Foundation and a former Justice Department civil rights attorney.

The Epoch Times refers to the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, as the CCP virus because the Chinese Communist Party’s coverup and mismanagement allowed it to spread throughout China and create a global pandemic.

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared March 19, 2020, in The Epoch Times.