Republicans Are Desperate to Fix Their Biggest Weakness—if Trump Lets Them

When the Republican National Committee announced last summer that it was launching the “Bank Your Vote” program to promote early and mail-in voting, the cognitive dissonance was stark.

Despite all the talk about boosting early votes and taking advantage of the tools Democrats have used themselves, there was total ignorance of the reason such an argument was necessary at all: because Donald Trump spent years persuading core Republican voters that these forms of voting are inherently illegitimate, untrustworthy, and un-Republican.

That hardened distrust has already cost Republicans elections. Routinely, the party’s candidates begin Election Day with massive disadvantages thanks to banked Democratic mail and early votes. Betting that the vast majority of GOP voters will get to the polls on one day—when weather, work, or a host of other reasons can intervene—is a recipe for defeat.

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Many Republicans widely recognize this as the party’s most underappreciated, and potentially most lethal, vulnerability heading into 2024—and Trump’s own handpicked new RNC leadership is talking about it still, too.

Michael Whatley, the new RNC chair, recently sent a memo to committee members that was devoted to explaining its plans to grow the Bank Your Vote program.

“Encouraging our voters to utilize early voting and vote-by-mail are top priorities as we reorganize the political operation at the RNC,” Whatley wrote, according to a copy that was obtained by The Daily Beast.

But despite GOP plans, funding, and enthusiasm to persuade Trump voters that casting their ballots early or by mail is safe, the cognitive dissonance among Republicans has never been more glaring. That’s because it’s increasingly clear no one can persuade Trump himself.

“Mail-in voting is totally corrupt,” Trump declared at a rally in Michigan on Feb. 27. “Get that through your head.”

A week before that, Trump participated in a South Carolina town hall with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, who asked him how he would prevent “problems” with mailed ballots.

“If you have mail-in voting,” Trump quickly replied, “you automatically have fraud.” The crowd applauded as Ingraham attempted to remind the former president he won the state of Florida easily even though mail-in voting is common there. “If you have it,” he insisted again, “you’re going to have fraud.”

“It’s a shame you’ll never have an honest election with a mail-in ballot,” Trump said in Iowa in January. “Remember that.”

Republicans are trying to counter this rhetoric, but top officials and strategists almost never directly contradict or challenge the former president—even as they mock and lament the impact of his mail-in voting obsession without naming him.

Since Trump’s message carries more weight with GOP voters than any other Republican or conservative organization ever could, strategists are trying to find ways to counter his public stance on the issue without looking as though they’re picking a fight with him.

Instead of directly contradicting Trump’s unequivocal and repeated exhortations against mail-in voting, what’s emerging is a collective GOP strategy to fight back by going around it—with Republicans hoping they can make a difference on the margins in key races.

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An RNC spokesperson pushed back on the assertion that there is any rift between the two and emphasized that two things can be true at once.

“You can want to change states that have bad laws while still making sure to play with the hand that is dealt in every legal way possible,” Danielle Alvarez, a spokesperson for the RNC and Trump campaign, told The Daily Beast.

They have their work cut out for them. With mail-in voting firmly associated at this point with conspiracies of Democratic fraud and cheating, GOP voters’ rejection of the practice has practically become a partisan litmus test.

Guy Ciarrocchi, a Pennsylvania GOP strategist, wrote an op-ed for Politico last year arguing that the distrust of mail-in voting among Republicans was a potentially existential threat for his party—one that leaders weren’t fully grasping.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Ciarrocchi said GOP voters look at going to the polls physically on Election Day as a “badge of honor.” What he’s telling people is, “If you’re a loyal and passionate Republican, if you feel strongly, vote by mail… snow, wind, power outage, your car’s stuck, you have to pick up your mom, bank your vote so you don’t have to worry about it.”

Even Whatley’s memo touting their mail and early vote program alluded to the conspiracies that necessitated the program in the first place, with the chairman writing that Bank Your Vote goes “hand in hand with our election integrity efforts—we want to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.”

Privately, Republicans sing a slightly different tune.

According to Politico, David McCormick—the GOP’s candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania—worried about the impact of Trump sowing distrust in early and mail-in voting on a private call recently.

A GOP strategist told The Daily Beast that official party efforts to boost mail and early turnout should be treated skeptically as long as Trump continues to step all over the message.

“It’s hard to have that credibility when it doesn’t come from the top—especially when you talk about how much the Trump campaign and the RNC are one,” they said, referencing Trump’s new handpicked suite of party leaders. The operative added that Trump’s hatred for mail-in voting could pressure the RNC to cut funding for the Bank Your Vote program when money inevitably gets tight this election season. “There’s likely to be a cash crunch very soon when it comes to our side—what gets cut first?” they asked. “You’re gonna be in triage mode.”

But changing voter behavior at the margins could be all Republicans need to neutralize their mail-in voting problem, Ciarocchi told The Daily Beast. In his home state of Pennsylvania, a coalition of Republican groups, as well as a super PAC backing McCormick, have launched what they call an “eight-figure investment” to boost mail-in voting in the pivotal state.

“If we can grow the Republican bottom line by 3 points, [Trump] probably wins Pennsylvania, probably wins the presidency, and we send Dave McCormick to the Senate,” he said. “I’m very optimistic because the goal is relatively small, but the impact would be enormous.”

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According to the RNC’s recent memo, the committee’s State Party Strategies Department will work with auxiliary Republican groups and grassroots organizations to inform voters early in the cycle of all the ways they can vote and for them to then “take advantage of existing and new voting opportunities.”

“Communicating with voters earlier in the cycle also presents an advocacy and educational opportunity, so voters know how and when they can cast their votes. Each state has different laws that govern how people can vote, and a lot of laws have changed since 2020. We will educate voters on all of the ways they can vote and we will partner with other organizations who share our mission,” the memo reads.

While this is opposite of what Trump says publicly, the RNC and those around the Republican nominee, are attempting to circumvent it. According to The Washington Post, top Trump adviser Susie Wiles has repeatedly told the former president in private that mail-in voting in states like Florida is safe.

“Everywhere is different,” a senior Trump official said on a recent press call. “We’ll have early voting in Michigan for the first time, we’ll take advantage of it. Mail ballots are not very old in Pennsylvania, we’ll have an opportunity to grow that. Ballot harvesting in Nevada is legal under certain circumstances; we’ll take advantage of it. So, what you will not have is a one-size-fits-all program. You will have something that’s different everywhere.”

“At the end of the day,” they said, “we will fish where the fish are.”

Although the COVID pandemic massively broadened the use of mail-in voting, certain states—like Nevada and Arizona—have automatically mailed ballots or offered no excuse absentee voting for years. In the 2022 elections, Democrats expanded their early vote leads in jurisdictions in Nevada and Arizona, making it harder for Republicans to surpass them on Election Day.

Many Republicans say they want to change these rules, but believe they will never be in any position to do so unless they can convince voters to use the tools that are legally available.

The hope among some operatives is that they can tailor state-specific messages that connect to individual states’ voting rules. The Pennsylvania effort, a joint project between McCormick’s super PAC and the right-wing Heritage Action political group, could end up being a prime example.

Republicans could very well turn the tide against their banked vote disadvantage if they avoid national political messaging frames, said Zack Roday, a partner at the GOP strategy firm Ascent.

“It’s not a national message. It’s state by state depending on where it is,” said Roday, who ran the Virginia GOP’s 2023 coordinated campaign, in which Gov. Glenn Youngkin focused on boosting early and mail-in voting among Republicans.

“I’ll acknowledge challenges at times, but we’re riding a good current here,” Roday said. “A lot of it will rest on resources.”

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National Republicans focusing on key battleground races are paying close attention to the margins, too. Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has tapped Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) to lead the committee’s efforts to boost mail-in voting to flip Democratic Senate seats in Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, and elsewhere.

“Turning Election Day into election month is a top priority for Chairman Daines, Sen. Hagerty, and the NRSC this cycle,” said NRSC communications director Mike Berg. “Republicans cannot unilaterally disarm while Democrats bank huge leads ahead of Election Day.”

The mail-in voting problem is escalating beyond Trump, however. Upstart actors in the MAGA political sphere are attempting to build a new organizing program around his conspiracies—one that, if successful, would essentially guarantee electoral massacres for the GOP.

Recently, the well-funded, Trump-aligned activist group Turning Point USA announced a fundraising goal of over $100 million for a voter outreach campaign. In a video posted to social media, a Turning Point strategist laid out a bold plan to retrain the party’s voters to only vote on Election Day.

“We’re not trying to encourage more people to get on the early voting list,” said Turning Point’s Tyler Bowyer, who called the RNC’s efforts “wrong.”

“If you vote too early, you’re basically telling Democrats how many votes they need to win,” he argued.

It’s a ridiculous argument, for several reasons: Republicans can see early Democratic votes, too, for one. But seasoned strategists know that giving the entire party base just one day to vote significantly raises the risk that people don’t show up—and forces campaigns to spend Election Day paying top dollar on frantic voter outreach efforts to make up a massive banked vote disadvantage.

In 2022, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) won re-election by 7,000 votes on a day when a snowstorm hit northern Nevada, typically a GOP stronghold.

In February, Democrats easily won a special election for former Rep. George Santos’ seat after banking a 7,000-vote early ballot advantage. On Election Day, a Nor'easter snarled roads and closed schools around the district, forcing a GOP super PAC to spend money on snowplows in a desperate attempt to boost turnout.

Other Republican candidates have chalked up Democratic early vote advantages to their defeats in close elections even without dramatic weather. Any number of reasons can prevent someone from getting to the polls on Election Day. Republicans see a refusal to seriously participate in early or mail-in voting as akin to bringing a rusty spoon to an electoral knife fight.

“It is extremely unhelpful for a Republican organization to spend millions of dollars encouraging people not to vote before Election Day,” a senior GOP aide told The Daily Beast. “In fact, it is an actively harmful message to send to voters.”

Bowyer’s remarks were the subject of an incredulous half-hour segment on the podcast Ruthless, which is hosted by GOP operatives aligned with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and is widely followed among the party’s campaign class.

One of the hosts, Michael Duncan, compared early and mail-in voting to the “discovery of the wheel.”

“The wheel works and it has always worked and it gets you places,” he said. “And then people are coming along and saying, those people selling the wheel are wrong. The wheel should be triangles, triangles will get us there faster.”

“That is the basic level of ignorance here,” Duncan said of Turning Point. “If you want to win an election, that is precisely what you do not buy. That is the reason we’re in the situation we’re in.”

Missing, of course, was any mention of the man who was selling triangles to begin with.

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