RNC Chair Confirms Continued Focus on Early Voting, Using ‘All Existing Tools’ to Deliver Trump Win

Former President Donald Trump (L) is introduced by then North Carolina Republican Party chairman Michael Whatley before speaking at the North Carolina GOP convention dinner in Greenville, N.C., on June 5, 2021. Jonathan Drake/Reuters

Michael Whatley, the new chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), said that the party will use all available tools to help former President Donald Trump win the race for the White House, including continuing the “Bank Your Vote” campaign that educates Republican voters on locking their votes in early through mail-in ballots.

Mr. Whatley recently took over as head of the RNC from now-former chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, who was a strong advocate of the “Bank Your Vote” campaign. The initiative focused on maximizing pre-Election Day voting through in-person early voting, absentee voting, and ballot harvesting where legal.

“To beat Joe Biden and the Democrats in 2024, we must ensure that Republicans bank as many pre-Election Day votes as possible,” Ms. McDaniel said in June 2023, when the early voting campaign was launched. “Banking votes early needs to be the focus of every single Republican campaign in the country, and the Republican National Committee will lead the charge.”

The move drew allegations of hypocrisy from critics, who pointed out that Republicans, and notably President Trump, have in the past derided mail-in ballots as a recipe for fraud.

In a bid to allay these concerns, the RNC under Ms. McDaniel’s leadership promised to complement the “Bank Your Vote” initiative with “Protect Your Vote” safeguards to bolster election integrity and ensure Republican voter confidence.

Now that Mr. Whatley has replaced Ms. McDaniel, and amid a big staffing and strategy shakeup at the RNC, there’s been speculation around whether there would be a change in early voting strategy, with some media outlets claiming that the “Bank Your Vote” was being killed in favor of a “Grow the Vote” outreach program.

However, in a bid to dispel those rumors as inaccurate, Mr. Whatley said in a Thursday memo to RNC staff obtained by NPR, and in a Friday interview on Fox News, that the early voting push would continue—in combination with a broad array of tools to help President Trump win.

‘Fully Focused on the Nuts and Bolts’

In the memo and in the interview, Mr. Whatley highlighted his wish to bolster RNC programs that focus on both in-person and absentee early voting, as well as ballot harvesting where legal.

“Despite what you may have heard, we are not closing community centers,” Mr. Whatley wrote in the memo, per NPR. “We are aggressively pursuing programs to grow our base and maximize opportunities to engage with Americans, utilizing all existing tools for our voters to cast ballots.”

He also said explicitly the “Bank Your Vote” campaign would “continue educating and empowering voters to feel confident in early voting and voting by mail.”

Besides maintaining the RNC’s focus on early voting, Mr. Whatley also wrote in the memo that the party would be reaching for every legal tool in the voting toolbox to help President Trump win the 2024 election.

“Every tool that the other side has used, we need to wield for ourselves,” Mr. Whatley wrote. “We will strive relentlessly towards historic accomplishments and fully modernizing the organization between now and Election Day.”

He also wrote that part of the RNC’s operational revamp will include focusing on voter outreach in communities that are not traditionally Republican, with the RNC looking to launch the “Grow Your Vote” initiative focused on reaching “nontraditional Republican voters and low propensity voters.”

Mr. Whatley further elaborated on where the RNC is heading in an interview with Fox News, in which he talked about pairing election integrity efforts with a range of methods to maximize GOP voter turnout and persuade undecided voters to back President Trump.

“When it comes to this presidential election, we are going to be fully focused on the nuts and bolts, the mechanics of making sure that we win this election. At the end of the day, we need to turn out voters and we need to protect the ballot,” he said in a March 15 appearance on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” program.

He was asked to provide some specifics on programs that the RNC is going to be spearheading to make sure Republicans don’t fall behind Democrats in terms of allowable voting practices.

“In every state, there are various different rules, but writ large, people can vote by mail, they can vote early in person or they can vote on Election Day, we want to make sure that people have a plan on how they are going to go out and vote,” he replied.

‘We Need to Turn Them Out’

Mr. Whatley said that over 50 percent of American voters will cast their votes before Election Day, and part of the RNC’s focus will be on communicating with them about casting votes early and about election integrity.

“We also know that there’s a large group of low propensity voters who will vote Republican, if they go vote, we need to turn them out,” he said. “All of our programs are going to be focused on making sure that we maximize the number of votes that we drive out, and that we have election integrity in place so that people feel good about the sanctity of their ballot.”

Asked pointedly whether the RNC would actively encourage Republican voters to cast their votes early, perhaps by mail, Mr. Whatley said it’s up to people how they vote, while the RNC’s efforts in this regard will be to ensure they cast their vote for the Republican candidate.

“Look, people need to make a decision for themselves about what is best for them on voting, whether it’s by mail, early in person, or on Election Day,” he said.

“We are seeing more and more voters, Republicans, Unaffiliateds, Independents, and even Democrats who are voting before Election Day, and we have got to make sure that we are talking to them and influencing those votes to the degree that we can before they go vote,” he said.

Mr. Whatley added that the various initiatives aimed at voter outreach and early voting will be paired with strong election integrity efforts, including mounting legal challenges to voter identification and signature verification rules that were put in place in the 2020 election.

President Trump has argued that a litany of last-minute changes to voting rules ahead of the 2020 election, a number of which were done by the courts without legislative approval, lowered the threshold for accepting questionable votes as valid and played a big part in swinging what he’s described as a “stolen” election in President Joe Biden’s favor.

“The RNC’s new posture as it relates to this litigation will be an aggressive, proactive effort to ensure that it will be easy to vote and hard to cheat,” Mr. Whatley wrote in the memo.