G.O.P. Leaders Embrace Early Voting, but Will Their Base Get on Board?

[RandySF]

The reversal is a concession to math and the realities of the moment, as the popularity of mail-in voting shows few signs of receding, three years after the pandemic began and accelerated its use. It also is a grudging recognition that Republicans have failed to gain traction with their baseless claims that mail voting compromises election integrity.

Even former President Donald J. Trump, whose lies and conspiracy theories about his 2020 election loss heightened the party’s distrust of mail voting, has been saying for months that Republicans have “no choice” but to embrace the method, at least until the party has the power to change voting laws.

As Mr. Trump seeks the Oval Office for a third time, his soft-pedaled shift illustrates the divide between the party’s candidates, who want to avoid adding to the string of defeats in 2020 and 2022, and his fervent base of supporters.

Still, Mr. Trump and some of the party’s other standard-bearers have tried to straddle both sides of the issue, sometimes in awkward ways, further confounding their voters.

While headlining the Georgia Republican Party convention this month in a state that doomed his 2020 re-election and is the center of a criminal inquiry into his attempts to subvert his loss, Mr. Trump again sowed distrust of voting by mail.



https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/us/politics/early-mail-voting-republicans-trump.html

[brewens]

1. I had girlfriend I had gotten together with right before Obama was elected that was what I would

call a libertarian type. We didn't have any problems with that at first, but she was probably deceiving me. I think she was right-wing all the way the whole time.

She lives in eastern Washington state near Moses Lake. Red as hell and loaded with poor rednecks, drunks, pill heads and meth users.

She loved mail-in voting when we first met. I don't remember her even suggesting the election was crooked when Obama was elected, though many right-wingers thought so. She went full-on Trumper on me and now believes all the bullshit.

I have not seen her since COVID hit. She and her family fell for all the COVIDiot lies. I can't believe they didn't lose anyone to COVID. It never did hit as hard in some of the rural areas in this part of the country. I think partly because so many places are off the beaten track. Some rural areas in more populated parts of the country get way more people travelling through. The are in between highly populated areas and we're not.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. In 2010 or so, the Texas Democratic Party started pushing vote by mail

This was done in part to combat the effects of proposed GOP voter id laws and to help GOTV. At the time, the GOP had a 8 to 1 advantage in my county of GOP vote by mail compared to Democratic vote by mail. Vote by mail and early voting used to be key parts of the GOP GOTV efforts. TFG changed that and it will interesting to see if the GOP can rebuild their early vote GOTV machine

[moose65]

4. Same in NC

After the Republicans took over the NC General Assembly after the 2010 election, they spent a decade promoting vote-by-mail and making it easier for people to do that. The reason: senior citizens use vote-by-mail more than any other group, and they lean Republican. They had it in all their campaign literature, saying that it was "safe and easy."

In 2016 in NC, more Republicans than Democrats used vote-by-mail: 76,000 Republicans to 60,000 Democrats, and 54,000 others. Fewer than 200,000 people total used it, though.

Fast-forward to 2020, when using vote-by-mail skyrocketed due to Covid: Over 1 million people in NC voted by mail. There were 445,000 Dems, 343,000 Unaffiliated, and 207,000 Republicans. Suddenly, voting by mail was bad and fraudulent.

I am hoping they have cooked their own goose with this one!

[Hortensis]

3. So the harsh reality for them is that they won't be able to suppress

main-in voting sufficiently in key states. Bless their hearts.

The effort, called Bank Your Vote, further calls for Republicans to take advantage of “ballot harvesting” where it is legal, a practice that allows a third party to collect voters’ completed ballots.

Wasn't that supposed to be crooked -- because Democrats did it? No wonder their voters are confused.

tRump's a slow and reluctant learner. He'll be pushing it almost certainly as election day approaches, but hopefully he'll have trouble remembering that he's supposed to be for it for the 15 months in between.

[Johnny2X2X]

5. They will never embrace it

They're all in on not voting early, because they were told that's when it's fraud.

This was a huge mistake by the GOP, it never made any sense to tell your people to only vote in person the day of.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

6. Flip floppers