Behind the scenes, top Republicans urge top Trump campaign officials to pressure the president to change his messages and accept the vote by mail, warning the party could lose the battle for control of Congress and the White House if you don’t change your tune in, according to multiple republican sources. Trump officials, sources said, are fully aware of the concerns.
The impact could be damaging to the Republican Party from top to bottom, according to a group of Republican election officials, field operatives, pollsters and lawmakers who closely monitor the issue. They argue that every vote will count in critical battlefield states, fearful that dissuading Republican voters from choosing a convenient option to cast their vote could influence the outcome of races that are decided by a couple of percentage points.
And with the coronavirus pandemic potentially worsening in the fall, voting by mail is becoming an increasingly popular option as many voters may prefer not to wait in long lines at polling stations. That will leave Democrats with a huge advantage if their voters mail their ballots while Republican voters give up on that option simply because they are listening to the President’s concerns.
In Wisconsin, a state that was central to Trump’s narrow victory in 2016, Republicans “begged our voters” to vote absentee when the pandemic first struck, said Rohn Bishop, chairman of the Republican Party in Fond du County. Lac, where Trump will have to go up. Republican participation in November.
“Then the president has a few tweets and he gets upset with the vote by mail and we leave the subject as a hot potato, and that’s where I think we are making a mistake,” Bishop said. “Our voters are running away from that. That terrifies me.”
Bishop added bluntly: “I’m getting worse because I think we’re just getting hurt … Anything that ties an arm behind my back, I don’t like.”
Bishop’s concerns are shared by Republican officials at the county and state levels, as well as by those who are deeply involved with the national side.
Glen Bolger, one of the top Republican pollsters, told CNN that he had just surveyed a battlefield state and found that three-quarters of voters planning to vote by mail or absentee intend to support the former vice president. Joe Biden; Only 15% of voters mailed in that poll planned to use the mail option to vote for Trump. Bolger declined to name the state, but said it exemplifies the real problems for Republicans if the trend continues.
“It could have a corrosive impact if some voters who had voted could not vote on Election Day, they would have left a lot of votes on the table,” Bolger said. “If you change your message about this, it could have a positive impact,” referring to Trump.
Former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, a Republican who was President George W. Bush’s cabinet secretary, said discouraging mail voting is “very dangerous for the Republican Party” and puts his party “at an incredible disadvantage” .
“There is no inherent advantage to one side or the other,” said Ridge, who chairs the bipartisan group VoteSafe, which advocates for greater access to voting. “The advantage is for the party that uses that method, that option of maximizing participation, on election day. So if you have a Republican president who undermines your own base and suggests that you don’t use the ballots in absentia, while the Democrats have shown, particularly so far in the primary season, they understand its value … so he puts his own party at a decided disadvantage because it discourages Republicans from using it. “
And Republicans are also concerned that Trump’s criticism of the process may cast doubt on the integrity of the election, particularly in hotly contested states like Ohio.
“It is irresponsible, whether Republican or Democrat, that people incorrectly believe in the minds of voters that they cannot trust their elections,” said Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican. both to the president’s claims and to Biden’s recent suggestion that Trump may not leave office if he loses.
In Ohio, nearly 8 million registered voters will receive absentee ballot requests after Labor Day, and LaRose predicts that approximately 35% -40% of the ballots will finally be mailed in November, compared to approximately 20%. -25% in past elections, amounting to “the highest level of mail-in voting we’ve seen in our state’s history.”
“When people try to say that voting by mail or absentee mail benefits a party, it just doesn’t work in Ohio. People want to vote,” said LaRose. But when asked if fewer Republican voters could choose to vote absentee in November because of the president’s criticism, he said: “That is an absolute possibility.”
Republican House and Senate leaders have publicly and privately called for more resources for a vote by mail, and they hope the President will change his mind.
“A lot of people are going to vote by mail, and we need to do what we can to see that it is done safely and to encourage people to believe and ensure that it is done safely,” said Senate Ruling Chairman Roy Blunt . , a Missouri Republican, said Thursday.
New York’s 27th Congressional District special election last month illustrated the potential dangers to Republicans if their voters give up voting by mail. The state, which has several contested races in the House, expanded the mail vote this year after Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order in April to send absentee ballot requests to all residents.
Trump tries to make distinction on mailed ballots
Republicans on Capitol Hill, concerned that the trend will continue if Trump maintains his rhetoric, have tried to pressure the president to change his message. Sources said the problem has been repeatedly raised with Trump campaign officials, who have acknowledged potential problems for the Republican Party.
After putting pressure on campaign officials, the president has tried to massage his message in recent days. In fact, campaign officials managed to get him to try to make a distinction during his speech in the Rose Garden of the White House on Tuesday night. Trump argued that it is perfectly acceptable for voters to request absentee ballots. But he argued that states that proactively send ballots to voters are creating a system fraught with fraud.
“You will have tremendous fraud if you mail these ballots,” Trump told reporters. “Now, absentee ballots are fine, because absentee ballots – you have to get the applications. You have to go through a process.”
But in all cases, ballots are returned the same way: by mail.
When asked if a majority of voters would understand the distinction Trump is trying to make between absentee ballots and proactively mailed ballots, Matt Mashburn, who sits on the Georgia State Board of Elections, said : “No”. He added: “I think Georgia has a wise system.”
The June primaries in Georgia saw an explosion of interest in absentee ballots in a state where voters must request absentee ballots after their requests are verified and the signatures match county officials.
In typical Georgia elections, about 5% of ballots are returned in absentia; However, in the June primaries, about 49% of the ballots were absent, amounting to 1.15 million, according to Gabriel Sterling, who is the statewide voting implementation manager in Georgia. Democrats outnumbered Republicans in the absentee vote, but they had a competitive primary in the Senate, which the Republican Party did not have.
“There is an armament of the left and right electoral administration, and it is not helpful how the elections are supposed to take place,” Sterling said, referring to Democrats’ concerns about voter and Republican crackdown on electoral fraud claims.
And while Trump is trying to make a distinction between proactively mailed ballots and absentee ballots, voters “probably” don’t see much of a difference, Sterling said.
“Most people think that voting is voting,” he said.
Still, Republican lawmakers in states across the country are introducing bills to limit voting by mail in November. And there have also been lawsuits.
LaRose, the Ohio secretary of state, has wanted to make it easier to request absentee ballots by allowing voters to go online and request them, rather than by mail. But he has faced opposition in the state Legislature and said the president’s criticism of the process is “one factor.”
“It just means we have work to do, and we’re going to do the work and take care of it,” said Dean Black, president of the Republican Party in Duval County, which covers Jacksonville. “Historically, voting by mail works in favor of Republicans. So that would tend to be a positive thing for President Trump.”
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Marshall Cohen contributed to this report.
.
