Trump’s crusade against mail-in ballots undercuts campaign pitch to vote early

Donald Trump speaks in Atlanta, Georgia, on Wednesday. Photograph: Megan Varner/Getty Images

Donald Trump’s attacks on mail-in voting have increasingly caused heartburn for the Trump 2024 campaign as they attempt to undo the self-sabotage by ramping up operations in key battleground states encouraging Republicans to vote early and by mail ahead of the presidential election.

The former US president has continued his crusade in recent months: in December he called for the end of mail-in voting entirely, before claiming in an interview last month that “any time the mail is involved, you’re going to have cheating”.

Trump’s attacks are complicating efforts at the Trump campaign to convince Republicans to vote early, which advisers know is crucial to win the election given Democratic voters have no qualms about voting by mail or organizing ballot initiatives and have given their party a major advantage.

Just 28% of Republicans support allowing any voter to cast a ballot by mail, compared with 84% of Democrats, according to a study in February by the Pew Research Center. A large part of that thinking, sources close to Trump concede, has been driven by the former president’s criticism of early voting.

The problem has become multi-faceted, sources familiar with the situation say. The Trump campaign needs to convince Republicans who believe Trump’s every word that they can discount his fearmongering, while ensuring they do not anger Trump by undercutting his position.

In essence, the Trump campaign has the delicate task of persuading Republican voters to participate in early voting methods that Trump has falsely said were the reason why there was rampant fraud in the 2020 election that meant he lost to Joe Biden.

The undertaking is made difficult by the fact that Trump’s voters typically take him at his word. The fear instilled in them of early voting means that Trump and down-ballot Republican candidates are far more at the mercy of election day problems like bad weather, long lines or voting machine issues.

At the same time, Trump advisers are spending time trying to make sure they do not appear like they are trying to control the former president or are deliberately trying to undermine him – perceptions he particularly hates.

The internal concern at the campaign, the sources suggested, is not wanting to aggravate Trump could ultimately mean that efforts to push early voting and mail-in voting are not managed or pursued as aggressively by the top levels of the campaign for fear of incurring Trump’s fury.

A Trump spokesperson did not directly comment on Thursday but said Trump’s position is that Republicans need to use early voting initiatives because Democrats are, even if in an ideal world, there would be no early voting for either party. The spokesperson added that Trump encouraged voters to turn out early in town-halls and video messages, especially during the Republican primaries.

Still, Trump’s logic on canceling mail-in voting has never been clear. If Democrats supposedly used mail-in voting to steal the election, it would make little sense to rail against the use of mail-in voting and convince Republicans to abandon the practice.

The available data on early voting, which was popular among Democrats and Republicans until the 2020 election, also shows that the practice is enormously effective and efficient for presidential campaigns in turning out their base.

The benefits of “banking” votes are many: campaigns don’t have to spend time and resources chasing their voters and reminding them to cast their ballot if they already have done so, freeing up resources, and ensuring high-propensity voters aren’t lost due to unforeseen problems on election day.

Republican strategists have separately warned the Trump campaign privately that having aggressive early voting and mail-in voting operations in key battleground states could decide the outcome of the election, particularly in Arizona and Georgia.

In the 2020 election, when many Americans voted by mail because of the Covid pandemic, 7 million more Democrats than Republicans voted early in the 20 states that compile party data, the United States Elections Project found. In the 2022 midterms, 2 million more Democrats than Republicans voted early in 24 states.

In both years, Republican candidates lost narrowly to Democratic opponents, including when the Republican candidate for Arizona governor, Kari Lake, lost to the Democratic candidate, Katie Hobbs, by about 17,000 votes. Meanwhile, about 19,000 more Democrats than Republicans voted by mail.

To undo the damage done by Trump, the campaign is ramping its efforts telling Maga voters to cast their ballot early through a blitz of television ads, door knocking and mailing flyers, among other initiatives including the RNC’s Bank Your Vote program that was shelved then restarted.

The Trump campaign is also expected to rely on adjacent groups to help with get-out-the-vote measures. Turning Point USA, a far-right Trump group that slammed mail-in voting, recently created a $108m Chase the Vote program to convince Maga voters who trust the group to vote early.

But the pitch to Republican voters will always be hobbled by Trump’s own remarks, one of the sources conceded, and may have to make the false argument that the only way to combat Democratic cheating is to cheat themselves – even if the premise of the argument itself was false.