OPINION:
Having been burned by mail-in ballots in a handful of places across a couple of election cycles, it is not surprising that Republicans are hesitant to fully embrace the imperative to be competitive with Democrats with respect to voting by mail. Every person of goodwill wants to ensure ballot integrity. At the same time, campaigns, especially those contested at the margins, should do everything in their power to maximize votes for their cause.
To meet these essential twin imperatives, at the beginning of this year, the Republican State Leadership Committee PAC, the Keystone Renewal PAC and the Sentinel Action Fund announced the largest Republican statewide mail-in-ballot effort — an investment of millions of dollars — in Pennsylvania’s history. This effort was designed to reduce the Democrats’ dominance in voting by mail in both the upcoming elections this fall and in future election cycles.
As Jessica Anderson, president of the Sentinel Action Fund, correctly stated: “Conservatives can and should do two things at once: maintain our calls for election integrity while we simultaneously utilize all legal tools and tactics to turn low propensity voters out and win in November.”
The reality is that as the Republican Party changes, it will need to focus on identifying and turning out voters, of whom an increasingly larger proportion are only partially attuned to the tempo and deadlines of election cycles. More importantly, Republican voters tend to be busy people, with families, jobs, and community and neighborhood commitments. Whatever can be done to make voting more convenient for such voters should be pursued.
Having embraced the challenge, the Republican State Leadership Committee and its partners did not want to wait for the general election, so they launched their effort in advance of the April 23 primary election in Pennsylvania. The team sent vote-by-mail applications mailers to over 1.5 million Republican voters, launched digital advertisements delivering over 20 million impressions, and sent more than 475,000 text messages to voters.
The results?
In the primary cycle, Republicans produced about 236,000 vote-by-mail ballot requests, an 18% increase from the 2022 primary cycle and just 50,000 fewer requests than the 2022 general election in Pennsylvania. The Republicans also had more than 160,000 ballots turned in by mail last month, a 7% increase compared with the 2022 primary.
While the Democrats had more requests for mail-in ballots and more ballots returned, the Republicans chipped away at their advantage. In the 2022 primary, Democrats had about 400,000 more ballots returned than did Republicans; last month, that difference shrank to a bit more than 300,000 ballots returned. Perhaps more importantly, the Republicans continued to build a cohort of voters comfortable with voting by mail.
Why is all of this important?
In the 2022 general election in Pennsylvania, Democrats went into Election Day with 825,000 votes in the bank, compared with about 250,000 votes for the Republicans. In that cycle, the Republicans lost a Senate race by about 264,000 votes. Similarly, in 2020, then-President Donald Trump lost to President Biden by 80,000 votes of about 7 million votes cast. This year’s elections in Pennsylvania are certain to be equally close.
The world in the 21st century is pretty simple — either you are a master of technology and process or you are a victim of technology and process. The Republican State Leadership Committee and its partners are determined to make sure that the Republicans are the masters of election technology and process. Their efforts in Pennsylvania have given them a head start on the general election and demonstrated that they have the right formula for success.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times and a co-host of the podcast “The Unregulated.”
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