Republicans pushing to embrace mail-in voting encounter widespread resistance [View all]

Source: NBC News

April 2, 2024, 2:00 PM EDT


When Donald Trump held a rally last year in Erie County, an important area in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, the top Republican official there went one by one to the 11,000 people waiting in line to ask one question: Would you like to vote by mail?

It did not go well. “I tried to give them a mail-in ballot application, and could only get out about 300,” Tom Eddy, head of the county’s Republican Party, said. “Every one of them said either, ‘No, that’s not the right way to vote,’ or ‘Trump does not agree with it.’”

What happened in Erie County is emblematic of the ongoing feud within the GOP over one of the most fundamental elements of elections: how to vote. And it reflects a strain at a critical time for the party, when national and battleground polling has shown the 2024 presidential election could be won at the margins.

National Republicans are attempting a shift to embrace mail-in and early voting to match what’s been a Democratic advantage in recent years. But interviews with nearly 20 Republican officials and voters across the country say there is lingering, and sometimes fierce, resistance to the idea — from Trump on down. The schism signals potential peril for the party in the fall if it once again fails to match Democrats’ on-the-ground ballot organization.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/republicans-trump-mail-voting-resistance-rnc-rcna145599