The Republican National Committee (RNC) has launched a video ad encouraging supporters to vote early in the upcoming 2024 presidential race—insisting it’s crucial to win the elections.
The 30-second ad features multiple GOP leaders—RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, former Vice President Mike Pence, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, former President Donald Trump, Senator Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Representative Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), and Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). The video requests Republicans to cast ballots before Election Day, both in-person and by mail.
“That’s how we’re going to beat the Democrats at their own game,” said Mr. Hagerty.
The new ad will air Aug. 23 during the first Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee. The RNC will host more than 400 debate watch parties in the 50 U.S. states, with attendees encouraged to pledge to bank their vote early on BankYourVote.com.
In addition to the ad spot, the RNC will set up a Bank Your Vote booth in Milwaukee on debate day, which will include fact sheets about how to vote early or do absentee voting.
Those who pledge to bank their votes at BankYourVote on Aug. 23 will stand a chance to attend a future Republican presidential primary debate.
“When Republicans vote early, we win. To ensure that Biden is a one-term President, Republican voters from across the country need to bank their vote ahead of Election Day in 2024,” Ms. McDaniel said in an Aug. 23 press release.
“The RNC will be leading the Bank Your Vote charge this cycle, and we’re proud to partner with so many Republican leaders from across the ecosystem to bank and protect Republican votes.”
The initiative seeks to educate GOP supporters on where, when, and how to cast ballots prior to Election Day. Parry members will visit citizens door-to-door across the United States, collecting ballots from voters and dropping them off on their behalf—a process known as ballot harvesting.
The Republican Party will engage in ballot harvesting in places where it is legally permitted.
The new RNC spot follows a July 6 video the committee had posted that featured President Trump encouraging Republicans to vote early.
“For too long, radical Democrats have abused and taken advantage of absentee and early voting laws to build a big lead over Republicans before Election Day. 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,” he said.
Ballot Harvesting
In a Jan. 13 opinion piece in The Hill, Paul E. Peterson, a professor of government at Harvard University, pointed out that rules like ballot harvesting “fit the Democratic Party agenda.” In 1996, nine out of 10 voters cast their ballots in person on Election Day, which fell to six out of 10 in 2016, he said.A Pew Research study from November 2020 showed that 46 percent of voters cast their votes by mail-in or absentee ballots in the 2020 presidential election. Just over half the respondents voted in person.
While 32 percent of Trump supporters voted through absentee or mail-in ballots, this was much higher in the case of Joe Biden, as 58 percent of his supporters used mail-in ballots.
Joseph Arlinghaus, president of Valor America, a conservative federal election SuperPAC, warned in a May 19 article at The Federalist that Republicans “should not bet on ballot harvesting.”
He pointed out that Democrats already have an established “powerful election-industrial complex” that works for them. The giant network of foundations, charities, and think tanks that support the left’s ecosystem has been developed over several decades, he stated.
“Even if Republicans somehow managed to gain the financial resources to fund their own ballot-harvesting operations, it would take many years to recruit sufficient numbers of conservatives and develop the leadership to effectively mount a counter to the Democrats’ election activism ground game,” Mr. Arlinghaus wrote.
Democratic ballot harvesters use data mining and sophisticated statistical models developed by highly skilled data analysts. Republicans have “generally disdained this technical aspect of political science,” he stated.
In an interview with Breitbart in December, President Trump said that the Republican Party has “no choice” but to pursue mail votes and ballot harvesting in places where they are legal. However, he admitted that the mail-in ballot system “will always be corrupt.”
“When you go to a polling location and they want your identification and everything, the way—you can’t really vote unless it’s a legit deal. If you have mail-in ballots, nobody has any idea where it’s coming from or where it’s going to, and then it travels through so many hands,” he pointed out.
“For the time, though, we have to live with the system that stinks, so we have to fight it like they do.”
