Inside Trump's stunning flip-flop on early voting
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After years of calling voting by mail "corrupt" and "crooked," Donald Trump and GOP committees are scrambling to convince their voters that it's safe and secure ahead of the Nov. 5 elections.
Why it matters: Democrats have built a large mail-in voting advantage over the GOP in swing states that could decide the election, as many Republican voters have bought into Trump's stated distrust of voting by mail.
Driving the news: Trump — who has long cited mail-in voting in questioning the results of the 2020 election — abruptly shifted his public messaging this month.
- "ABSENTEE VOTING, EARLY VOTING, AND ELECTION DAY VOTING ARE ALL GOOD OPTIONS," he posted on Truth Social.
- "REPUBLICANS MUST MAKE A PLAN, REGISTER, AND VOTE!"
In Pennsylvania, three Republican groups including the GOP's top fundraising committee for state-level leaders spent $1.5 million ahead of last week's primary to organize supporters to vote by mail.
- The groups — the Republican State Leadership Committee PAC, Keystone Renewal PAC and The Sentinel Action Fund — will spend at least $8.5 million more on the campaign before November, according to a spokesperson.
- As part of their messaging to skeptical Republicans, the effort emphasizes that members of the military have trusted mail-in voting for decades.
Trump's older son, Donald Trump Jr., also did ads for the effort.
- "Pennsylvania, I need you to join the mail-in voting list today," he says to the camera, before pointing to a website, SkipTheLinePA.vote.
Reality check: It might be too late to rebuild the trust in vote-by-mail that Trump tore down after the 2020 election.
- Trump repeatedly railed against the practice as recently late February. In Michigan on Feb. 27, he said: "Mail-in voting is totally corrupt ... Get that through your head."
Pennsylvania Republicans saw gains in vote-by-mail requests and returned ballots in the recent primary compared to the 2022 primary, but early GOP votes still trailed Democratic numbers by significant margins.
- In a memo obtained by Axios, the leaders of the GOP's mail-in campaign in Pennsylvania acknowledged the divide: "Our program never sought to overtake Democrats in vote-by-mail voting outright ... our goal has always been to continue to chip away at their advantage and narrow the gap."
Zoom out: While the GOP's political apparatus is all-in on mail-in and early voting, it is still running into headwinds among some of the grassroots organizers.
- Tyler Bowyer, chief operating officer of the student arm of the pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA, recently said: "We're not trying to encourage more people to get on the early voting list."
- "If you vote too early, you're basically telling Democrats how many votes they need to win," he said.
- Those comments provoked frustration and outrage among some veteran GOP operatives, including the conservative podcast "Ruthless" which led to an episode in early April criticizing the comments.
What they're saying: A Trump campaign spokesperson pointed to a recent post on Truth Social by the ex-president supporting early voting.
- "Conservatives ... should do two things at once: Maintain our calls for election integrity (and) ... utilize all legal tools and tactics to turn low-propensity voters out and win in November," said Jessica Anderson, president of Sentinel Action Fund, which is funding mail-in efforts for conservatives in battleground states.
- "Fresh off the heels of losing every competitive special election so far in 2024 and getting swept in 2022 and 2023, Republicans and the [Republican State Leadership Committee] are finally deciding four years too late that they want to catch up to modern campaign tactics," said Abhi Rahman, communications director for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.
