By Tim Reid, Julia Harte and Nathan Layne
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin was traveling to a campaign rally aboard Donald Trump’s private jet in early April when he decided to broach the sensitive issue of early voting.
As the Boeing 757 flew from Florida to Green Bay, Wisconsin, Johnson pressured the Republican candidate to use his speech to urge his supporters to vote before Election Day.
Early voting often draws a torrent of criticism from Trump, who falsely claims it is vulnerable to fraud and cost him the 2020 election.
But Johnson is one of several senior Republicans — many of them in key battleground states like Wisconsin — who are worried that Trump’s demonization of early voting could undermine their hopes of winning back the White House on November 5.
“I encouraged the president to encourage Wisconsin Republicans to cast their votes,” Johnson said, adding that he has not encountered any resistance from Trump. “I would recommend he get on board.”
“We have to do everything we can to fully utilize the rules as written. The Democrats certainly did,” said the 69-year-old senator, himself a recent convert to early voting.
But not only did Trump not tout the importance of early voting at the April 2 rally, he also told the crowd of more than 3,000 supporters that his goal was ultimately to limit voting to Election Day only, a message received with huge applause.
And when Johnson — in his third term in the Senate — took the convention center stage to urge Republicans to vote early, he was met with tepid applause from just a few people.
Proponents of early voting say it increases turnout and avoids the problems of people not being able to vote on Election Day due to bad weather, logistical problems at polling stations or personal reasons. Voter rights groups say there is no data to show that early voting can lead to fraudulent voting.
In the last 2020 presidential election, during the COVID-19 pandemic, early voting reached new highs. And in the 2022 midterm elections, half of U.S. voters cast ballots before Election Day, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The November elections will be a tight race between Trump and President Joe Biden, opinion polls suggest. The Democratic incumbent defeated Trump in Wisconsin by just 20,000 votes in 2020 and the state is again a big prize for both parties.
Not pursuing an early voting strategy in 2024 would be “political suicide,” said Brian Schimming, chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party.
Reuters spoke to Republican Party leaders in four of the likely seven states up for grabs: Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and North Carolina. They told Reuters they are making a big effort to encourage Republicans not to wait until Election Day to vote.
The newly sworn-in leaders of the Republican National Committee (RNC) – Michael Whatley and Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump – insist the former president agrees to early voting.
“We urge all Republicans to vote early, by mail, on Election Day, or whatever method works best for them,” RNC spokeswoman Claire Zunk said in a statement to Reuters.
But as Johnson’s experience underscores, it is unclear whether voters are willing to embrace the new message after Trump’s repeated and ongoing allegations of fraud.
Suzanne Sliva, a 60-year-old businesswoman from Lucas, Texas, said she views early voting with suspicion and believes it should be reserved only for exceptional circumstances.
“Voting is a day,” she said, as she waited for Trump to speak at a National Rifle Association (NRA) event in Dallas, Texas, last weekend. “Everything is counted in one day and we know before midnight who the winner is.”
Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida who has analyzed election data for more than 30 years, said it would take a lot of messaging to change the minds of some voters, “particularly Trump himself.”
MIXED MESSAGE
Trump’s position, however, remains unclear. At a campaign rally in New Jersey on May 11, the candidate, for the first time in a speech this year, promoted early voting for the November 5 general election: “Get an absentee ballot or mail it in, vote early or vote on Election Day,” he told his supporters.
However, in the same speech he said that “voting by mail is largely corrupt.”
And at a rally on April 13, Trump compared early voting to “stealing” the vote. In March, he called mail-in voting a sham.
In fact, he has called mail-in voting corrupt or a sham at least 11 times in speeches this year alone, according to a Reuters analysis of his prepared remarks.
But away from the teleprompter, Trump has posted twice on Truth Social since mid-April that early voting is important.
“It doesn’t really help,” said Oscar Brock, an RNC committee member from Tennessee and early voting advocate, referring to Trump’s mixed messages.
Voting rights groups accuse the RNC of duplicity in publicly supporting early voting. They note that the RNC, Republican lawmakers in swing states, and conservative groups continue to pass laws and file lawsuits that restrict access to early voting.
Activists say these efforts disproportionately affect minority groups, which tend to vote in large numbers for the Democratic Party. Republicans deny the charge, saying they seek to protect the integrity of the voting process.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said the former president has always advocated free and fair elections, “where all legal votes are counted and any cases of fraud are eradicated.”
“Democrats have proven they are willing to change voting rules during a pandemic that has made our elections more susceptible to fraud,” Cheung said.
In the 2020 presidential election, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Democratic election officials in many states expanded early voting, adding polling locations, extending voting deadlines, and increasing the use of mail-in voting.
The Democratic National Committee is investing “tens of millions” of dollars to promote early and mail-in voting this year, said Alex Floyd, director of rapid response at the DNC.
In 2020, 82% of Biden supporters voted early, compared with 62% of Trump supporters, according to the Pew Research Center, an independent think tank based in Washington. Nearly twice as many Biden voters sent in mail-in ballots compared to Trump supporters, according to Pew.
SWING STATES
Despite Trump’s mixed messages, state Republican party chairs in the four swing states told Reuters they are moving forward with early voting.
Josh McKoon, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, said the party on April 29 sent a video promoting early voting to 70,000 registered Republicans through social media and email.
In North Carolina, Republican Chairman Jason Simmons said the party is holding training sessions with county and borough chairmen on how to message voters about the importance of early voting, while in Michigan, GOP Chairman Pete Hoekstra , encourages early voting every time he speaks to grassroots activists across the state.
In Wisconsin, Schimming, the party chairman, said senior Republican officials in the state released videos of themselves voting early in this year’s primaries to reinforce their message of voting before Election Day.
And in Pennsylvania, the Republican State Leadership Committee, along with two other Republican groups, launched a $10 million initiative to promote mail-in voting in the state, an effort first reported by Reuters.
Turning Point Action, a conservative group that was once skeptical of early voting, says it plans to spend more than $100 million in Wisconsin, Arizona and Michigan to persuade Republicans who rarely vote to vote.
Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for TPA, said he expects the majority of those votes to be cast before Election Day.
LITIGATION
Celina Stewart, chief counsel for the League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan voting rights group, said early voting makes the election process safer because it catches errors. About 47 states use some form of early voting, she added.
But in five swing states this year — Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina — Republican lawmakers passed bills or introduced legislation aimed at restricting access to early voting 28 times, according to a Reuters analysis of the legislation. in state chambers.
The bills sought several ways to restrict access to early voting. They included three provisions to eliminate early in-person voting altogether, 15 to make it easier to prevent people from voting early and seven to reduce early voting locations, according to the Reuters tally.
The RNC has also filed or supported 29 lawsuits aimed at restricting early voting, 17 of which concern voting by mail, according to Democracy Docket, a progressive voting rights group that tracks election-related litigation.
“Republicans are trying to appeal to their voters and there is simultaneously a pressure to suppress the vote and restrict voting access,” said Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
Research shows that restricting access to early voting “disproportionately reduces access and participation among voters of color,” Weiser said, because they often work multiple jobs or lack access to transportation, making it more difficult for them to access locations. voting on election day.
Zunk, the RNC spokesman, did not directly respond to Reuters’ questions about the legislative processes or efforts, but said the party was “dedicated to ensuring voting across the country so that all voters can have full confidence in an election.” fair”.
(Reporting by Tim Reid, Julia Harte and Nathan Layne. Additional reporting by Brad Heath and Gram Slattery. Editing by Ross Colvin and Daniel Flynn)
