After years of denouncing casting ballots in the mail for early voting, former President Donald Trump appears to have changed his opinion of the practice.
Advisers for Trump shared with the Wall Street Journal that the former president is still critical of several early voting practices. However, his campaign is mounting an effort to pursue such votes nonetheless.
The decision comes as the adviser says that Democrats have excelled at early voting in recent elections, leading Trump’s team to study state laws concerning absentee and mail-in voting to receive a better turnout in future elections.
Trump isn’t the first Republican to change his tune on early voting, as his GOP rivals, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, have already been critical of the party’s choice to focus mainly on Election Day turnout.
“We were completely outplayed electorally. The Democrats did a full-court press to vote early. We sat on our hands,” Haley said during a November speech for the Republican Jewish Coalition.
“Early and absentee voting are here to stay,” Haley added. “We need to play the same game and turn out the maximum number of voters. The left does it, and we don’t.”
While Trump was the first major candidate to announce his running for the Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential election, he is no longer unchallenged. Haley announced her campaign this week, and DeSantis continues to be speculated as a main challenger for Trump.
Across the aisle, Democrats appear to be waiting for President Joe Biden to announce his reelection bid. So far, no rivals have declared their intention to receive the Democratic nominee over him.
When it comes to pushing voters to cast their ballots early, a practice referred to as “ballot harvesting” by critics, a fundraising email sent out this week from Trump looked to encourage his supporters to step up and vote early.
“The radical Democrats have used ballot harvesting to cancel out YOUR vote and walk away with elections that they NEVER should have won. But I’m doing something HUGE to fight back,” the email said, the Journal reported. “Our path forward is to MASTER the Democrats’ own game of harvesting ballots in every state we can. But that also means we need to start laying the foundation for victory RIGHT NOW.”
Trump isn’t wrong when he says that Democrats own the game of mail-in voting, as roughly 60% of Democrats voted by mail across the country in 2020 as the pandemic raged on. For comparison, Republicans saw only 30% vote by mail, about the same number seen by both parties in 2016, MIT’s Election Lab reported.
Still, Trump has a lot of work to do if he wants his supporters to regain their faith in mail-in voting, as polls from Pew Research have shown his rhetoric since 2020 has damaged Republicans’ faith in early and absentee voting.
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