The Republican Party is going “full forward on a mail-in ballot strategy,” said Pennsylvania GOP Chair Lawrence Tabas.
The DVJournal asked Tabas how he would convince Republican voters to vote by mail since, for several years, they tended to vote on Election Day unless they needed an absentee ballot.
“We have developed a task force,” said Tabas. “We’re working very strongly now on educating our voters as to the benefits of voting by mail. We’ll be working with the RNC on this, and I am very confident that you will see a much larger vote by Republicans supporting our candidates this year and next year.”
In 2021 the Republicans increased mail-in ballots at a higher rate than Democrats, he said.
In a June 7 press call, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said the Bank Your Vote Campaign is a nationwide effort.
“We all know, we’re all very aware, we no longer have an Election Day, we have an election season,” said McDaniel. “Many, many states have weeks and weeks of early voting. Bank Your Vote will make sure Republicans take advantage of that.”
In Pennsylvania, mail-in ballots are mailed out to voters 30 days before an election.
McDaniel said she wants to raise awareness among GOP voters well before 2024 that they can “lock in their votes as early as possible.”
“We’ve got to double down,” said McDaniel. “We’ve got to educate our voters. I think of it this way. We have some voters that like to vote on Election Day. We have to explain to them we can’t allow Democrats to get a head start.”
“Why are you going to wait until the fourth quarter to score a touchdown when you have four quarters to put points on the board? That’s what this whole initiate is about, and we’re going to lead the charge in getting Republicans to chase ballots and build an advantage before Election Day.”
After 2020 voters were “skittish,” she said. “They needed to know their vote would be protected. That’s why we recruited 80,000 poll watchers and poll workers.”
They also filed 100 election integrity lawsuits in the 2022 cycle. She wants voters to know that “if they vote early, their vote will be protected.”
She said they will have workers on the ground, going door-to-door, as well as digital teams. They will target younger voters on social media.
“We will protect the House, flip the Senate and make Joe Biden a one-term president,” said McDaniel.
Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and tasked with electing and re-electing senators, said, “If we learned one thing in the last election cycle, 2022, it’s we need to turn Election Day into Election Month.”
“The Democrats outraised us financially in past cycles,” he said. “What they’ve also done is dominated in early and mail-in voting.”
Sen. Bill Haggerty (R-Tenn.) said. At the same time, Republicans have a “great map,” with three Democrats running in red states, an unpopular president, and an open border “that’s fueling a drug overdose epidemic.”
“We’ve got an energy policy that is absolutely absurd, making America less competitive rather than more so,” he said. “We’ve got an economy that’s dealing with inflation at record levels.” And numerous foreign policy challenges around the world. But they can’t take these advantages for granted.
“We have got to bank our votes early. We have a great opportunity to vote… A friend said, ‘You don’t want to put off buying that Christmas present until Christmas Day.’”
And Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said they are “focused on keeping House majority and growing it.”
They plan to recruit “strong candidates” and run “strong campaigns,” giving those candidates the “resources they need to win.”
Guy Ciarrocchi, the former chair of the Chester County Chamber of Commerce who ran for governor last year, wrote an op-ed in 2021 telling fellow Republicans to embrace mail-in ballots.
“Unilateral disarmament has never been an effective winning strategy,” said Ciarrocchi on Friday. “Conservatives are duty-bound to learn how to successfully execute a mail-in vote effort; otherwise, we risk losing races—no matter how effective our Election-Day strategy is.”
Jake Zane, spokesman for the Delaware County Republican Party, said Chairman Frank Agovino’s first step as a new chair was to form a committee on mail-in ballots.
“And that committee issued a report,” said Zane. “We’re moving forward with a plan to boost Republican turnout with a mail-in ballot effort through the hard work of our committee and robust digital efforts.”
