But as statewide Republicans increasingly embrace mail-in voting, it looks like voters are starting to too, Votebeat reports.
In August, President Donald Trump vowed on social media to “lead the movement to get rid of MAIL BALLOTS” and voting by mail.
In Pennsylvania, however, Republicans are sending voters a different message as they work to unseat three state Supreme Court justices this November, a historically difficult feat that will require as many voters as possible to turn out.
“In 2024, we voted by mail and turned Pennsylvania red.” video ad The Republican State Leadership Committee said it was urging voters to visit the website to request their mail-in ballots for the judicial custody election.
Republican voters in the commonwealth have been getting conflicting messages like this for years, said veteran GOP consultant Christopher Nicholas, noting that Trump’s controversial statements, particularly on mail-in voting, meant “it took our base longer to integrate the new voting options.”
But as state-level Republicans increasingly embrace mail-in voting, it appears that voters are starting to too. Let him vote reports.
About 12,000 more Republican voters have requested mail-in ballots for this November election than for the last municipal election in 2023, and there are still more than three weeks left to request a ballot.
As more of these voters use mail-in voting, Nicholas said, it has become less “intimidating” for them.
How the rhetoric of mail-in ballots has changed
It took the party a while to get to this point.
After the 2020 election, many Republicans questioned the integrity of mail-in voting, and some lawmakers even tried cancel A 2019 law that made it easier to vote by mail in Pennsylvania.
Republican voters avoided it, too. For the six primary and fall elections from 2021 to 2023, Republicans accounted for just 22% of all mail-in ballot requests.
But Republican rhetoric about mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania began to change a few years ago.
State Sen. Doug Mastriano, a Trump ally, told Republicans after losing his 2022 bid for governor by roughly 15 percentage points.must accept no-excuse postal voting” and blamed their loss on their reluctance to do so.
Last April, ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, appeared in an ad encouraging Republicans in the state to vote by mail.
“If you’re working double shifts or family responsibilities prevent you from voting on Election Day, Joe Biden wins,” he says. in advertising. “Pennsylvania, I need you to join the mail-in voting list today.”
Trump himself also encouraged postal voting sometime last year.
And it seems it worked. In the 2024 presidential election, Republicans accounted for 32% of voters requesting mail-in ballots, a higher share than ever before.
Still, Trump has stuck to his rhetoric against mail-in voting.
“ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL VOTING AND EVERYONE ESPECIALLY DEMOCRATS KNOWS THIS,” he wrote. August 18 post on social media. “I AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY WILL FIGHT LIKE HELL TO RETURN HONESTY AND HONESTY TO OUR ELECTIONS.”
Berks County GOP Chairman Jim Billman said he agrees with the president’s recent statements and would like to see absentee mail voting go away because it is too susceptible to fraud. But despite how he feels, he said Republicans still need to take advantage of the option to be competitive with Democrats.
“Even though we want to see this end one day, right now, it’s the law of the land,” he said, so his advice to voters is: “If you can’t get out to cast your vote in person, vote by mail.”
Infrequent voters are being targeted
When looking at voter turnout, political parties and activists often think of voters in terms of how often they vote during a four-year election cycle. A “four-year” or “4-year” voter is a voter who votes in every election and can generally be counted to cast a vote.
But voters who rarely or never vote, or only vote in even-numbered years associated with larger federal elections, parties hope can use mail-in ballots.
Those are the “small votes” Billman said mail-in ballots are targeting. “You really have no excuse if your mail-in ballot comes to your house.”
The Republican Party of the state also takes a similar line. James Markley, director of communications for the Pennsylvania GOP, told Votebeat and Spotlight PA that while voting by mail has its drawbacks, the party encourages voters to use any “legally necessary means” to cast their ballots.
“If postal voting is part of the process and voters can’t go to the polls on polling day, they should request a postal vote and make sure their voice is heard,” he said.
The state GOP website provides three ways to vote, the first being mail-in voting options and the third being in-person voting.
Conservative activist Scott Pressler, who focuses primarily on state voter turnout for Trump, has also been actively pushing mail-in voting on social media, calling it an “emergency backup ballot” that voters can use if they can’t make it to the polls on Election Day.
Nicholas, a Republican consultant, said how GOP voters cast their ballots is far less important to party officials than making sure they vote.
“Winning the campaign,” he said, “is paramount.”
This story was produced Let him vote and revised and distributed Stacker.
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