The argument here is about playing the game that is, not the game you wish it was.
In blue states, and even many red states, like Florida, mail-in voting is the law of the land and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Yes, some states have placed some limits on it, such as shortening the time frame or making the requirement for mail-in ballots more along the lines of an absentee ballot which must be requested with an accompanying reason. Still, early voting in many forms is here to stay.
After the midterm shellacking around the country and the recent runoff loss in Georgia, some Republicans, like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, are starting to re-think the way the GOP approaches early voting.
Here’s Newt on Hannity Tuesday night explaining his rationale following Herschel Walker’s loss in the Georgia Senate runoff:
Gingrich is simply reading the writing that’s already on the wall. The concept of exclusively voting in person on a single day is fading in many states for various reasons. Part of the reason is that Democrats wish to remove as many guard rails as possible so they can engage in measures like ballot harvesting, and partially because it simply makes it easier for more people to vote.
As it stands, Gingrich makes the point that if the GOP wants to keep starting Election Day down several hundred thousand votes hoping to make that margin up, they’re going to keep losing:
Leading up to Election Day, numerous conservatives online called on the GOP to embrace measures that are giving their political opponents advantages in elections. Republicans are much more likely to vote in person and on Election Day than Democrats, who are more likely to embrace voting early and through the mail.
On Fox News’s Hannity, the Republican from Georgia told the host he thinks it is time for the party to catch up or it risks getting left behind. Host Sean Hannity said he would prefer using paper ballots while making exceptions for those serving in the military or those with health or other conditions.
He noted the system is not set up that way, and he asked Gingrich, “Don’t Republicans have to work the system that they have?”
Asked by Hannity if the GOP needs to end a “reluctance” to embrace the tools being used by Democrats, Gingrich agreed.
A counterpoint here to Newt’s point, perhaps some candidates that are inherently flawed aren’t going to overcome a deficit regardless of whether they embrace early or mail-in voting.
Take Florida, for example, a state which reformed its laws after the 2000 recount debacle and now has a great election process. A lot of early and mail-in voting happens in Florida and Republicans did extraordinarily well there. Part of that is because voters wanted to crawl over broken glass, and literally a coast battered by Hurricane Ian, to vote for Ron DeSantis. There was no Election Day deficit, DeSantis led early and mail-in voting along with the Election Day in-person ballots.
To that end, the GOP has a couple of problems. The first is working on candidate quality for statewide Senate elections, the second is making sure that they are utilizing mail-in voting and even the controversial ballot-harvesting techniques employed by Democrats. If that’s the game, then play it and play it better than the other side, that’s the point Newt is making.
This will not go down well with many right-of-center voters who see early voting as an opportunity to mess with ballots and interfere in elections. If I vote in person and physically stick the ballot in the tabulating machine, then I know it’s counted. If I mail it in early and send it off somewhere, did it really get counted or did it get “lost” somewhere along the way, either intentionally or by accident? That’s the dilemma for many voters, especially voters who feel that elections have become increasingly and unnecessarily messy in recent years with what amounts to Election Month rather than Election Day.
It’s not a fix to happen overnight, but Newt’s point is that mail-in voting and early voting are not going to change in the near term so Republicans better figure out how to play the hand they’ve been dealt.
