BETHLEHEM, Pa. — After years of publicly demonizing Pennsylvania's mail-in voting system, state Republicans are trying to reverse course to better compete with Democrats who have dominated the system since its adoption three years ago.
The Republican Party of Pennsylvania is participating in the Bank Your Vote campaign, an initiative organized by the Republican National Committee with the goal of increasing turnout.
In a video statement released earlier this month, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said the party has worked hard to ensure election integrity. But launching lawsuits and organizing thousands of poll watchers and poll workers alone won't be enough to defeat President Joe Biden and other Democrats next year, she said.
"To win close elections, we need to close the gap on pre-Election Day voting," McDaniel says in the video.
- Republicans are rolling out the Bank Your Vote campaign to increase the number of GOP voters who use mail-in ballots
- Party leaders are trying to overcome Democratic dominance of mail-in ballots since 2020
- It's a shift away from years of Republican attacks - largely unfounded - painting the mail-in ballot system as prone to fraud
According to a news release, the campaign partners with state parties to educate voters on their options for casting their votes ahead of Election Day. In Pennsylvania, that's mostly mail-in or absentee ballots. The Bank Your Vote website includes McDaniel's statement, a solicitation to donate to the RNC and an opportunity to sign up for text messages from the party.
State Republican officials declined an interview request with LehighValleyNews.com but provided a statement from Chairman Lawrence Tabas.
"The PAGOP worked with Pennsylvania and national experts to develop a mail-in ballot strategy, which pulls best practices from the most successful efforts across the country. We're just getting started but, together with the RNC's "Bank Your Vote initiative," we are firmly on track to change the margins," Tabas said in the statement.
The party has room for improvement. In the Lehigh Valley, Republicans are only slightly outnumbered by Democrats, but usually account for only about a quarter of mail-in ballots. Similar patterns have developed at the state level. Democrats accounted for 45.6% of registered voters in the November election but requested about 70% of the mail-in ballots, according to Spotlight PA.
"If your goal is to win elections, this is an opportunity to increase the turnout of voters that otherwise might not vote on Election Day."Christopher Borick, professor of political science at Muhlenberg University
Christopher Borick, professor of political science at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, said Republican leadership is wise to try and change course. Republicans don't need to completely overcome Democrats' huge advantage in mail-in ballots, he said. Just narrowing the gap could be enough to make a difference in competitive races.
"If your goal is to win elections, this is an opportunity to increase the turnout of voters that otherwise might not vote on Election Day," he said.
But the GOP will need to overcome a culture within the party that's long discredited mail-in voting, Borick said. Even though Republican lawmakers overwhelmingly voted in 2019 to make mail-in ballots more widely available, they turned against it months later when then-President Donald Trump baselessly attacked the system as a prone to fraud, he said.
State Republicans repeatedly attempted to strike down the law but were blocked by former Gov. Tom Wolf. Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano made repealing the law a major plank of his failed gubernatorial campaign in 2022, claiming Democrats had corrupted the system he originally backed.
Borick said there's been no evidence to support any of the concerns about mail-in ballots harming election integrity. All the tough talk has accomplished is to hamstring Republican candidates with self-inflicted wounds, he said. Getting Republican voters to embrace mail-in ballots now will be difficult, Borick said, but will likely be worth the effort.
"If you poison the well, as many Republican leaders have in regards to mail-in ballots, it's hard to clean it up later," he said.
Even a minor shift in turnout could alter election outcomes in battleground Pennsylvania. Last year, Pennsylvania Republicans lost close races for U.S. Senate and three competitive U.S. House races — including the Lehigh Valley's 7th Congressional District. In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden edged out Trump by 1.17% margin.
