How Republicans learned to stop worrying and love early voting

Republicans are stepping up efforts to persuade once-skeptical voters to cast ballots ahead of Election Day as early voting kicks off in a handful of states this month.  

GOP skepticism about early voting and absentee ballots has been a vexing problem for the party, exacerbated by former President Trump, who has offered mixed messaging on the practice over the years.

But Republicans are hoping that some of their recent initiatives, such as their “Swamp the Vote” operation encouraging voters to cast ballots ahead of Nov. 5, will help make up ground compared to Democrats, who are much more likely to vote early. 

“There’s no way that we can give somebody else 50 days to get their vote out and hope to overcome that in 13 hours, and I think some of the races that we’ve had since 2020 have brought that home,” said Sam DeMarco, chair of the GOP in Allegheny County, Pa. 

Early voting is set to start this month in states including Pennsylvania, Virginia, Illinois and Minnesota. While Pennsylvania is technically the first to start early voting, on Sept. 16, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania State Department noted in an email to The Hill that the date isn’t a fixed timeline and that “objections and other legal actions related to third-party candidates are still pending.” 

Some states will also begin sending out absentee ballots this month, including in North Carolina, where those ballots will start being mailed out Friday.

Republicans have launched multiple initiatives this cycle to encourage their voters to take advantage of the various voting options available before Election Day as they look to cut into Democrats’ advantage on early and mail-in votes. The most prominent one is Swamp the Vote, an initiative of the Republican National Committee (RNC) grassroots organizing program “Trump Force 47” that outlines voting options available across different states. 

“Our strategy hasn’t changed: Kamala Harris is just as incompetent as Joe Biden and even more liberal,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.  

“Not only does Kamala need to defend her support of Joe Biden’s failed agenda over the past four years, she also needs to answer for her own terrible weak-on-crime record in California,” she added. “A vote for Kamala is a vote to continue inflation, open borders, high gas prices, and war around the world.” 

The RNC also announced a “Protect the Vote Tour” program earlier this year to mobilize poll workers, poll watchers and legal experts.  

“Our efforts to Swamp the Vote and Protect the Vote go hand-in-hand,” RNC spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement. “In order to ensure that Americans feel confident casting their ballot, whether it’s by mail, early in-person, or on Election Day, we must Protect the Vote and ensure commonsense election integrity measures across the country.” 

Other GOP groups are also getting involved in early and mail-in voting efforts. Turning Point Action launched an initiative under a similar name — Chase the Vote — that looks to identity and register Republicans to vote. The group says on its website that it’s seeking to have more than 1,000 field organizers “responsible for tracking and chasing key target ballots in battleground states.” 

The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) PAC, Keystone Renewal PAC and the Sentinel Action Fund have invested eight figures in statewide efforts in Pennsylvania. An RSLC official said the group was also making investments in Michigan geared toward “a handful of target legislative districts.” 

In some states, Republicans were already leaning into early voting. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) and a handful of groups launched their “Secure Your Vote Virginia” initiative during the 2023 state legislative election cycle. The RNC also had a “Bank Your Vote” program that same year.  

Though Republicans narrowly lost control of the Virginia state House that cycle, an RSLC official argued that “we would have lost significantly more races without the investment that we made in absentee and early voting in partnership with the Senate caucus, the House caucus and Gov. Youngkin’s team in that state.” 

“If you have a good messenger, if you have resources, you have good unity — I mean, you can go make that case to your electorate,” added Zack Roday, a Virginia GOP strategist who served as coordinated campaign director for Youngkin’s 2023 legislative effort.  

Still, the collective efforts by prominent organizations to come together and rally around the strategy across the country is notable, particularly because the party’s standard bearer hasn’t always encouraged its use.  

On the one hand, the former president has at times encouraged the use of early and mail-in voting, including during a 2023 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference and in a post on his Truth Social platform in April where he wrote, “ABSENTEE VOTING, EARLY VOTING, AND ELECTION DAY VOTING ARE ALL GOOD OPTIONS.” 

At the same time, Trump said in 2020 during a COVID-19 task force press briefing that “I think a lot of people cheat with mail-in voting.” More recently during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate last month, Trump said, “Anytime you have mail-in ballots, you’re going to have problems” and urged for one-day voting.

His campaign, however, has previously argued that he has remained “very consistent” in how he talks about the issue.  

Vince Galko, a former executive director for the Pennsylvania GOP, suggested that while Trump and other conservatives’ previous remarks on the issue have been a problem in the past, Republicans believe the party is finally making headway on the issue.

Galko also suggested that prior GOP messaging was misdirected amid a changing terrain over ballot boxes and ballot requirements.

“I think the messaging coming out of the Republicans and the Trump camp was wrong where they were saying they got cheated, where it wasn’t so much they got cheated. It was so much that they couldn’t keep up with the constant changing of rules by Democratic governors and supreme courts,” Galko explained.

While members of the party are sympathetic to the idea of holding one-day voting, they also argue that the GOP ultimately needs to roll with the punches and embrace different methods of voting.

“I think it’s just the mentality among GOP operatives that we have to get good at this and master it because it’s vitally important, particularly when you’re talking about winning states by 50- or 40,000,” Virginia GOP strategist Jimmy Keady explained.