Republicans don’t like it when students vote. In red states, the GOP makes voting as difficult as possible for students living on campus or in college towns. And they would like to make it even more difficult.

One Trump Republican was particularly blatant about saying so at a gathering of filthy rich GOP donors.

A top Republican legal strategist told a roomful of GOP donors over the weekend that conservatives must band together to limit voting on college campuses, same-day voter registration and automatic mailing of ballots to registered voters, according to a copy of her presentation reviewed by The Washington Post.

Cleta Mitchell, a longtime GOP lawyer and fundraiser who worked closely with former president Donald Trump to try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, gave the presentation at a Republican National Committee donor retreat in Nashville on Saturday.

Just to clarify, that was Saturday April 15th.

The presentation — which had more than 50 slides and was labeled “A Level Playing Field for 2024” — offered a window into a strategy that seems designed to reduce voter access and turnout among certain groups, including students and those who vote by mail, both of which tend to skew Democratic.

Mitchell did not respond to a request for comment, and it is unclear whether she delivered the presentation exactly as it was prepared on her PowerPoint slides. But in addition to the presentation, The Post listened to audio of portions of the presentation obtained by liberal journalist Lauren Windsor in which Mitchell discussed limiting campus and early voting. 

Brace yourself for some idiotic GOP attempt at stereotyping.

“What are these college campus locations?” she asked, according to the audio. “What is this young people effort that they do? They basically put the polling place next to the student dorm so they just have to roll out of bed, vote, and go back to bed.”

Personally, I’ve always felt energized – empowered – when I’ve voted. And since polls don’t close anywhere in the US before 6 PM (at the very earliest), the thought of waking up to go to vote and going back to bed right afterwards seems like Republican asininity in the extreme. 

Basically Cleta admitted that this isn’t about winning elections. It’s part of a greater blueprint to keep people the GOP doesn’t like from voting at all.

Mitchell told her RNC audience that her organization, the Election Integrity Network, “is NOT about winning campaigns,” according to the text of the presentation. But the slides gave little other rationale for why campus or mail voting should be curtailed. At another point in the presentation, she said the nation’s electoral systems must be saved “for any candidate other than a leftist to have a chance to WIN in 2024.”

Pumpkin Face himself weighed in.

In Trump’s private comments to donors at the event, he said that he eventually wants to end all mail and early voting, according to audio obtained by The Post. But until that happens, he said, Republicans had to get better at it.

Remember Trump’s infamous call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger? Apparently ol’ Cleta had something to do with that.

Mitchell advised Trump and was on the call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021 when Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn the result.

“All we have to do, Cleta, is find 11,000-plus votes,” Trump said on the call, which is now under investigation by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as part of a broader inquiry into efforts to overturn the 2020 result in Georgia.

No matter how inconvenient it may be, we need to vote in every single election and for every office. There’s no such thing as an unimportant election. Voting consistently is the only way to preserve democracy.

People on the far right have been successful because they’ve taken the long view. It took them 49 years but by never missing an election they paved the way for the repeal of Roe v. Wade. And they’re still not finished trying to drag us back to the pre-Enlightenment dark ages.

Do whatever it takes to register and vote – in EVERY single election and for every office. 

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A friendly reminder that voter registration is done by address. If you’ve moved since the last election, even just down the street, you must register at your new address.