As last week’s election debacle unfolded in Wisconsin, and tens of thousands of people struggled to get their votes counted, Donald Trump let loose: “Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to statewide mail-in voting,” he tweeted. “Democrats are clamoring for it. Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans.” It’s distracting and inaccurate, but the president gets rare points for honesty in admitting that his views on mail-in voting are dictated by electoral self-interest.

But deduct points for political acumen. When I spoke to a cross-section of voting experts, they all rejected the idea that mail-in voting hurts Republicans. Wendy Weiser, an expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, told me that it is “very baffling that the point of attack is on a method that favors older, whiter voters.” Michael Hanmer, an election expert at the University of Maryland, argued that there is no evidence that expanding mail-in voting is inherently favorable to either party and that, like most voting efforts, it tends to favor whoever best organizes, educates, and motivates their base. An effective get-out-and-mail strategy by Republicans among older voters has been credited with cementing the party’s strength in both Arizona (where Republicans substantially outpace Democrats on the list of people automatically receiving mail ballots) and Florida.

This year the stakes could be even higher. If coronavirus resurges in the fall, as some experts have warned, older voters could be even more discouraged from in-person voting. In a recent Morning Consult poll, 74% of voters over 65 indicated they would be very or somewhat concerned about in-person voting if coronavirus were still a material threat in November. In what could be a painfully close election, even incremental drop-offs could pose a significant threat to Republican chances. Even worse for the president, confidence among Republicans in mail-in balloting now runs more than 20 percentage points behind Democrats, according to Morning Consult, and voters who are very favorable to Trump are a full 27 points behind those who are very unfavorable. This could well have a negative effect on Trump turnout if in-person voting becomes difficult, as it did in Wisconsin last week.

Because of this, not all Republican leaders immediately fell in behind Trump. Some did; Missouri governor Pat Parson declared he was “not interested in making any drastic changes…out of fear.” (Mail-in voting in Missouri is notoriously difficult: It is permitted only in six statutorily defined situations, and a notary must witness your signature on the absentee ballot in most cases.) Republican officials in other states, including Ohio, Washington, Nebraska, and West Virginia, all openly defended the efficacy of the process, or began pushing changes to make it easier to vote by mail. Even Trump walked back his comments, at least a little bit, tweeting, “Absentee Ballots are a great way to vote for the many senior citizens, military, and others who can’t get to the polls on Election Day. These ballots are very different from 100% Mail-In Voting, which is ‘RIPE for FRAUD,’ and shouldn’t be allowed!”

Likely more important, though, is the impact of Trump’s rants on local Republican officials. Voting by mail, especially for people not used to the process, is a fraught affair, with many opportunities for disqualifying mistakes. First-time mail voters need to learn how and when to request ballots, states will have to print and distribute millions of them, and voters will need to learn how to fill them out, at times navigating multiple signatures, witnesses, and, in a few cases, even notarization. Each of these steps makes dropouts more likely, and requires voter education, training of election (and postal) staff, and significant investments in technology. If you don’t do it right, you end up with lots of “errors on both ends,” as Hanmer put it to me.