After years of making claims that mail in ballots are tied to election fraud, former Republican President Donald Trump is now embracing the mail-in option.
According to a copy of Trump’s remarks at a Saturday Republican National Committee event in Nashville, Tenn., he told donors that they will have to use mail-in voting and ballot harvesting to get him elected in 2024, POLITICO reported.
Last month, CNN Politics also noted that Trump seemed to be warming to the idea of mail-in voting.
It said that he told attendees at a Conservative Political Action Conference that conservatives need to change their thinking about mail-in voting. Additionally, the outlet said that Trump’s recent speeches and fundraising emails, touted plans to encourage “ballot harvesting.”
“Ballot harvesting is the practice in which political operatives collect absentee ballots from voters’ homes and drop them off at a polling place or election office. It may sound pretty innocuous, but this practice can and has been abused across the country,” said the Committee on House Administration, led by Republican Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin.
As recently as Nov. 29 – shortly after he announced he would run for president in 2024 – Trump was criticizing mail-in voting.
“REMEMBER, YOU CAN NEVER HAVE FAIR & FREE ELECTIONS WITH MAIL-IN BALLOTS – NEVER, NEVER, NEVER. WON’T AND CAN’T HAPPEN,” he said in a Truth Social post.
CNN said that Trump has said the GOP now has “no choice” but to beat “Democrats at their own game.”
Even before Trump lost the 2020 election to current President Joe Biden, he began making claims about voter fraud, some related to mail-in ballots. These claims are unfounded and RNC chair Ronna McDaniel has said the party must move on and encourage mail-in voting, according to POLITICO.
Many polls have shown Trump in the lead of the potential GOP 2024 presidential candidates, including a FiveThirtyEight polling average released last week. However, at least one poll released this week showed that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has not officially announced that he will run, was leading in key swing states, said Newsweek.
Trump was also indicted on criminal charges last month, and it is unclear how that case will impact his 2024 presidential run.
Related
Related
