Top Republicans are seeking to reassure their voters that preelection balloting is something they should participate in where legal even as the party battles many of those procedures.
“I’m not going to lie. I do not like ballot harvesting,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told reporters Wednesday. “We don’t think it’s good practice. I don’t like having election month. … We’re going to continue to fight this in the court.”
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McDaniel made that admission while outlining the party’s new “Bank Your Vote” initiative, which aims to bolster early GOP voter turnout in elections, something seen as a drag on the party in the past.
This includes absentee ballots, early in-person voting, and ballot harvesting, a process by which political operatives can transport a ballot from a voter’s home to a polling center.
As part of the new effort announced Wednesday, which is led by Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) and Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), the party will strive to “encourage, educate, and activate” their voters on those procedures.
Key to this initiative will be an attempt to allay Republican voter concerns about early voting.
“The reason we’re using the word ‘bank’ is because we want them to feel like that vote is in a vault and that it’s being protected at the same time when you put that mail ballot in and that we are going to be watching the process from start to finish with lawyers and poll watchers,” McDaniel added.
Roughly 47 million early votes were cast in the midterm elections, about 45% of which came from Democrats compared to 35% for Republicans, according to NBC.
Prominent Republicans such as former President Donald Trump have long cast aspersions on early voting, and many GOP voters have eschewed it. Trump and many of his allies peddled heavily disputed claims that electoral malfeasance deprived him of victory in 2020 and have pointed to many of the more flexible procedures in states.
Recently, however, some, such as Trump, have begun changing their tune about those procedures and emphasizing plans to exploit early voting procedures, despite opposing many of those policies.
“We’ve got to have a change of culture among Republican voters. And it’s going to require us all on the same page,” National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson (R-NC) said. “We’re going to use all the above options, every option that’s available — any legal way of voting, we’re going to dominate the Democrats.”
“It’s just common sense. And it’s simple math. You want to get as many votes in before Election Day. But that certainly is a challenge. If you have people in your ecosystem saying, ‘Don’t vote early,’ or, ‘Don’t vote by mail,'” McDaniel continued. “I don’t think you’re seeing that heading into 2024. I think you’re seeing all of us singing the same song.”
McDaniel described the ultimate objective of the move as “winning,” particularly in both chambers of Congress and the White House. The RNC is planning to tap into its existing initiatives for election integrity, strategic messaging, digital and data, and ground game to help enhance the “Bank Your Vote” initiative.
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Already top 2024 contenders have signaled interest in exploiting preelection voting procedures even if they disagree with the given policy. “We’re going to do ballot harvesting,” Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) recently told an Iowa voter.
“Now, they’re all openly talking about making sure we use every habit and that people take every avenue to vote. And so, I think that, structurally, from the RNC perspective, we just want to make sure that that’s effectively deployed,” Donalds said.
