On Politics: Why Republicans are muddling their early voting message
Why Republicans are muddling their early voting message
The latest, with 27 days to go
The banner strung up above former President Donald Trump's cheering supporters had one message: VOTE EARLY. But the message coming from the rally stage was different. "Mr. President, I have something very important I think you're going to want to hear," said Sheriff Dale Schmidt of Dodge County, who had been invited onstage with Trump on Sunday in his rural Wisconsin community. "In Dodge County, in this 2024 election, there are zero drop boxes for the election." Trump jubilantly lifted his arms above his head and then stuck two thumbs up. The crowd went wild. In many states, drop boxes are a simple way for people to vote early, just like the banner said, because they allow them to return a ballot they received in the mail without relying on the Postal Service. But in Wisconsin, where they have been mostly banned and since re-allowed by the state Supreme Court, they're also a target of fierce Republican criticism. Schmidt has encouraged clerks in his county not to use them, according to records obtained by WisPolitics. (Local news outlets reported today there are, in fact, a couple of drop boxes in his county.) The Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, Eric Hovde, has baselessly suggested they can be stuffed with fake ballots. The Republican mayor of Wausau temporarily removed the one in front of his City Hall — a move that has prompted a state investigation and a protest just last night. The moment onstage struck me as a perfect encapsulation of a curious 2024 dynamic: Republicans are urging their supporters to vote early, well aware that Democrats' success encouraging early voting has helped them bank votes ahead of Election Day. But key figures in the party keep denigrating or limiting voters' options for doing that. When I called my colleague Nick Corasaniti, who covers voting and democracy, he said the contradictions go even further. Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, follows. There seem to be two messages from Republicans when it comes to early voting. We hear formal calls from party officials, like the Republican National Committee co-chair, Lara Trump, that encourage people to "swamp the vote" with early ballots. Then we hear Trump suggest early voting is "stupid" or falsely claim it's ripe for fraud. What's going on here? Both Trump and the R.N.C. are sending conflicting messages. Trump has been part of formal get-out-the-vote efforts, like a call he held with supporters in Maine yesterday, to motivate them on the first day of early voting in that state. But he also frequently — and baselessly — suggests that early voting is somehow corrupt. When it comes to the R.N.C., there is also a contradiction. It is encouraging people to vote early, which is something any campaign operative would want. But it is also joining a lot of lawsuits aiming to make mail voting harder. In Pennsylvania, for example, the party has joined a lawsuit that would throw out any mail ballot that has a slight error on the signature or date on the outside envelope, not even on the ballot itself. It has filed another that seeks to prevent local election officials in the state from helping anyone who makes a mistake on their ballot to fix it, so it's counted. It's oddly divergent.
It seems like their communication strategy and their litigation strategy are at odds. Why? They want to expand the early vote universe within their base, but, right now, mail voting is mostly dominated by Democrats. I just pulled the most recent early voting statistics in Pennsylvania, and there are about 960,000 Democrats who have their mail ballot applications approved, and 430,000 Republicans. It's still a 2-to-1 Democratic advantage in voting by mail in Pennsylvania. So, if Republicans' litigation strategy ends up invalidating some of those mail votes, it's likely to hurt more Democrats than Republicans. From the R.N.C., it's not mixed messaging. It's extremely strategic. Trump has been complaining about mail voting since 2016. How has that affected the party, and why are Republicans trying to encourage early voting now? Mail voting was once the province of Republicans. It was how Florida Republicans slowly climbed their way to power. It was Republicans who brought mail voting to Georgia in the mid-2000s. This was once very popular, although Republicans' use of the method decreased as Trump ramped up his complaints about it. In 2022, though, there were numerous races where some Republican activists saw the weakness in castigating vote by mail. One of the best examples is probably in Nevada, where Adam Laxalt, the Republican candidate for Senate, lost a very close race to Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto, a Democrat. A snowstorm had hit a vote-rich county on Election Day. It's impossible to know who was prevented from voting there, but it's possible that some Republicans who hadn't cast early votes couldn't make it to the polls as a result. In Arizona, there were long lines and some voting machine malfunctions on Election Day — and it was mostly Republicans showing up to vote on Election Day who were affected. You don't know exactly who didn't get to vote — but nobody who cast an early ballot had to worry about it. Is the message, muddled as it is, working? Are more Republicans voting early this year? We're only in the beginning stages of early voting, so a lot of data is incomplete. In the data we've seen from Pennsylvania, there's good news and bad news for Republicans. They're lagging significantly behind Democrats, but they are doing much better than they were in 2022. In an election of margins, any gains matter. I'm thinking back to Wisconsin and the fight there over drop boxes. What does it tell us about American politics that fights over voting methods — and inanimate boxes! — are happening less than a month out from the election? It's likely to leave a lot of voters confused, and it shows that the voting wars that were sparked by the 2020 race are probably never going to recede to what they were before that election — at least for the foreseeable future. A really big number.My colleagues Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman report that Vice President Kamala Harris has raised more than $1 billion in less than three months as a presidential candidate, according to three people with knowledge of her fund-raising haul. It's a remarkable sum that has remade the presidential race. Past presidential candidates, including President Biden and Trump four years ago, have raised more than $1 billion together with their parties. But the sheer speed with which Harris has reached that mark is notable.
A late-night beer for Kamala HarrisIt is a well-worn cliché I hate to even repeat: A presidential candidate ought to be someone you'd like to have a beer with. Last night, Vice President Kamala Harris did just that with Stephen Colbert — sort of. Colbert, who had asked in advance, pulled two cans of her requested brew, Miller High Life, from behind his desk as he interviewed Harris as part of a media blitz she has undertaken this week. "The last time I had beer was at a baseball game with Doug," Harris said, referring to her husband, Doug Emhoff, without specifying when that was. She cracked the can open, revealing a slight froth, said cheers, and took her first — and last — sip. She nodded. She wiped her lips. "Yep, the champagne of beers," she said, before turning the can so the label faced her, and then the camera. In doing so, she completed a classic campaign ritual, one inexorably tied to a polling question that, for a long time, was only ever asked about men. In 2004, Fox News asked voters if they would rather have a beer with then-President George W. Bush, or John Kerry (Bush won, 42 percent to 36 percent). Four years later, when CBS asked the question, Barack Obama won with 51 percent to Senator John McCain's 34 percent. A similar survey taken earlier this year in three states by Bullfinch found Harris slightly edging out Trump (who does not drink alcohol). Women have imbibed on the trail before. Hillary Clinton had a shot of whiskey in Indiana in 2008. Senator Elizabeth Warren drank a beer on Instagram live shortly after she began her presidential campaign in 2018 — though it was awkward when she offered one to her husband, and he declined. Still, it was a tiny bit of history, becoming the first female presidential nominee to drink a public beer, but like so many aspects of her pathbreaking candidacy, Harris let it go unremarked upon. And then she continued with her interview. Ruth Igielnik contributed reporting. Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
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