Republicans work to square election integrity with new early voting push

Republicans across the country are looking to snag wins in state and federal elections in 2023 and 2024, and they’re embracing early and absentee voting like never before to do it.

But the party’s base also becomes increasingly skeptical of election security and results, namely the 2020 presidential election, leading to intensifying calls for “election integrity.”

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The two goals can appear competing, as Republicans have criticized vote by mail and practices such as ballot harvesting for years.

And, as the party continues its significant early voting push, prominent Republicans deride the practice.

In former President Donald Trump’s pitches in favor of voting early, he still mentions his concerns over its security and ultimate distaste for the method. “I will secure our elections, and our goal will be one-day voting with paper ballots and voter ID,” he said in Iowa earlier this month. “But until then, Republicans have to compete and we have to win.”

At a separate New Hampshire event, the former president told his supporters they don’t need to worry about voting at all because he has “plenty of votes.”

“We have to be careful. You got to get out there and watch those voters,” he said. “You don’t have to vote — don’t worry about voting. The voting, we got plenty of votes.”

Despite his past of denigrating early voting and voting by mail, Trump made a video in support of the Republican National Committee’s Bank Your Vote initiative, encouraging voters to submit their ballots ahead of the various elections. But even in endorsing the movement, he cast doubt on the practice. “Radical Democrats have abused and taken advantage of absentee and early voting laws to build a big lead over Republicans before Election Day,” he explained. “While Republicans have worked to share our beautiful values with voters, Democrats and dangerous groups funded by the far Left have simply focused on collecting ballots. That’s all they wanted to do — collecting ballots. But you know what? It turned out to be not such a bad idea.”

The RNC has been building infrastructure in states nationwide, touting early voting for its supporters, who have been significant skeptics of it in recent years. Several congressional Republicans have joined the party to offer their endorsements of the initiative, and others have cut ads for it. Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) and Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) are co-chairmen of the RNC’s initiative, and the party has additionally enlisted the National Republican Senatorial Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee as partners. The party even launched a Spanish-language version of the initiative, highlighting several Spanish-speaking congressional Republicans in a video.

In a speech earlier this year, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel explained the necessity for early voting and how it is reconciled with election integrity. “Our approach to election integrity is: We fight in the courtroom, but we play by the rules we’re given in the field,” she said. “As we look ahead to 2024, we need to ensure that voters bank as many votes BEFORE Election Day as possible — through early voting, absentee voting, and ballot harvesting where it’s legal. If we only vote on Election Day, we will always be playing catch up to the Democrats.”

It is unclear whether this push, coupled with Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R-VA) own early voting movement, has convinced Republicans to commit to doing so en masse. In 2021, the share of GOP voters who believed “any voter should be allowed to vote early or absentee without a documented reason” fell from more than half in 2018, at 57%, to just 38%.

The post-2020 election measure demonstrated Republican distrust of current voting practices. Trump, who lost to President Joe Biden in the contentious 2020 battle, hasn’t changed his tune much on the subject. The former president still even refers to the contest as rigged despite audits conducted in key states with no findings of widespread fraud.

According to American Enterprise Institute senior fellow John C. Fortier, who authored Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises, and Perils, Republican preferences for election law don’t necessarily translate to their voter behavior.

“There were always some differences between the parties in terms of what they wanted to put into place for elections — so legislatures or state laws —Republican legislatures were more concerned about voting by mail, even early voting in person, I think, to some extent, maybe a little less,” he explained.

But, he said, “There wasn’t a huge difference in terms of voter behavior.” In fact, he pointed out that Republicans and Democrats have voted early by similar margins throughout the years, with the biggest shift coming in 2020, coinciding with Trump’s parroted concerns over election security and the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Youngkin’s most impassioned pitch for voting early, he, similar to other GOP politicians and party officials, insinuates that he isn’t a fan of the practice. “We can either continue complaining, or we can recognize reality, beat the Left at their own game, and win elections,” he wrote in a September op-ed.

In addition to the RNC’s effort, Youngkin, who pulled off an upset win against Democrat Terry McAuliffe in 2021 and boasts a higher approval rating in Virginia than Biden, has been touring the commonwealth in recent months, pushing voters in the state to vote early or absentee for Republicans. His PAC, Spirit of Virginia, previously launched a portal for Virginians called “Secure Your Vote Virginia,” which provides important voting information to those looking to vote early.

In 2010, according to Gallup, 26% of Republicans reported having already voted or planning to vote before Election Day, compared to 25% of Democrats. The parties remained in similar margins until sharply diverging during the 2020 presidential election, during which a historic nearly 70% voted before Election Day.

Among the significant number of voters who cast their ballots before the election, more than half, 58%, went for Biden, with just 32% in favor of Trump, per the Pew Research Center.

“In 2020, you did see that kind of polarization based on a number of things, arguably even based on things like their different attitudes towards the pandemic, like ‘Is it safe to go outside or is it safe to go to polling places?’ and questions of integrity,” Fortier said. “So I think you did see real evidence that the voters were much more likely to vote by mail from a Democratic perspective.”

“We saw really a big drop off at the Election Day polling place. So I think that’s the kind of big arc of history and relates to some of the integrity things,” he added.

In 2023, more than 500,000 Virginians have already voted early in person or by mail, per the Virginia Public Access Project. The party responsible for driving early voting is difficult to gauge, as Virginia doesn’t register voters by party. However, eight of the top 10 House of Delegates districts with the highest totals of early votes cast are rated either “leans Republican” or “competitive.” The district with the most votes, HD71, has seen 11,430 people vote early.

Similarly, seven of the top 10 state Senate districts with the most votes cast already are rated “strong Republican,” “leans Republican,” or “competitive.”

In New Jersey, which also hosts several competitive statewide races in 2023, Republicans have failed to show significant improvement in early voting. More than 352,000 in the state have reportedly voted early, most by mail, with early voting in person only beginning in the last few days. In the early voting tally, Democratic returned ballots outnumbered Republicans by nearly three times, 227,240 to 46,607.

New Jersey Republican Party Chairman Bob Hugin said in a recent interview with the Washington Examiner that he is personally opposed to voting by mail. “I would love to have voting on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday of the Election Day period, and anybody could vote by absentee ballot if they had a medical reason or work reason,” he said.

He explained that early voting is problematic because people don’t “get the information late in the campaign that often comes out after debates occur and when the pressures on you hear what people really think.”

But Hugin said the New Jersey GOP has still been pushing for early voting and absentee voting despite his qualms. “We are working hard, and we’re doing a better job than we’ve ever done. We invested more money in vote by mail and early voting, but it’s going to take a decade for us to get back on even footing with the Democrats,” he said.

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While the promotion of increased election security at the same time as early and mail-in voting has been criticized as a reversal for the GOP, Fortier claimed, “I’m not sure that it’s going to be such a contradictory message.” He pointed to various examples of states where early voting and voting by mail has been embraced by Republicans who have moved similarly to adapt to their states’ election laws despite not agreeing with them. He further agreed that the message of playing by the game’s current rules is more likely to resonate with election security-concerned Republicans than a full-throated embrace of early voting is.

In the 2022 midterm elections, early and absentee voting declined to 57%, per Gallup. Fortier predicted that this type of voting would begin to even out between the parties once again despite the demonstrated edge Democrats had in 2020 and 2022 early voting. In terms of nontraditional voting, he believes it will continue to retreat from the high of 2020, which was an “extraordinary” year due to the pandemic. However, he said it will likely be higher than the 2016 level, continuing the yearslong upward trend in the voting methods.