Former President Donald Trump is backtracking on ballot harvesting, and it’s a reversal that could prove fatal. Let me start by saying that I find this form of voting totally fugazi and potentially riddled with fraud, but it’s legal. It won’t be banned by federal law, and even at the state level, the states where this needs to happen to make some headway, like Pennsylvania and Michigan, are under total Democratic Party control. If that’s the case legally, the GOP must get going on ramping up these operations. We can no longer count on the Election Day vote to overtake the Democrats. It’s a gamble where the GOP got burned.
Earlier this year, the Republican Party signaled they would do just that. It saved a host of Republican incumbents in California, which allowed us to retake the House in the 2022 midterms, albeit by a razor-thin margin. I couldn’t care less about the media slamming us for being hypocritical. Their side will forever be home to endless hall-of-fame classes for that common political sin. This one is stale for most voters regarding ‘gotcha’ stories. It’s why it wasn’t an albatross around our necks when this was first announced. In February, Trump was on board (via WSJ):
After years of assailing early voting, Donald Trump is having a change of heart.
The 2024 presidential candidate remains critical of various forms of early voting, advisers say, but his campaign is nonetheless mounting an effort to pursue such votes after Democrats excelled at doing so in recent elections. His team is studying state laws governing absentee and mail-in voting as well as ballot collection, called “ballot harvesting” by critics, in which third parties gather and turn in votes, people familiar with the effort said.
It amounts to a significant shift for Mr. Trump and comes as GOP rivals, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, say the party squandered chances in recent elections by focusing too much on Election Day turnout.
Mr. Trump highlighted the move in a fundraising email this week, saying, “The radical Democrats have used ballot harvesting to cancel out YOUR vote and walk away with elections that they NEVER should have won. But I’m doing something HUGE to fight back.”
The email added, “Our path forward is to MASTER the Democrats’ own game of harvesting ballots in every state we can. But that also means we need to start laying the foundation for victory RIGHT NOW.”
In December, Mr. Trump told Breitbart News that the GOP has no choice but to “live with the system that stinks,” while maintaining “a mail-in ballot will always be corrupt” and that Republicans should seek to change laws.
Let’s win some elections first before we dismantle ballot harvesting. This battle will be piecemeal. And it might not even get off the ground when the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination has changed course because he thinks the same number of people who voted for him in 2020 will come out next year should he re-clinch the nomination:
SHOCKING: Trump dismisses the need for Republicans to ballot harvest in 2024, saying "you don't have to help me at all, I have all the votes we need."
— Never Back Down (@NvrBackDown24) June 23, 2023
Trump learned nothing from 2020 and has no plan to win in 2024. pic.twitter.com/FxpGJC3dah
Six weeks apart. pic.twitter.com/NWmfHXmxHY
— John 'pro-norms' Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) June 23, 2023
No, I don’t trust that Trump has the votes we need to win; it’s too early. He knows he has the votes—what the hell is he talking about? And not only that, but the entire party shouldn’t do it next year. Again, it sucks, but we all need to take a Prednisone for this political inflammation, get jacked up, and try to beat the Democrats at their own game on this stuff. Not wanting to do something legal because we were either against it before or think it’s dirty electioneering is why our side loses a lot. Doing whatever it takes to win next year’s election should be the only priority, and if that means taking a page from the Democrats’ playbooks, then so be it. The GOP has to do ballot harvesting next year. Let's not gamble; throw everything against the wall.
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