Trump, Youngkin urge early voting during tele-rally

Markus Schmidt, Virginia Mercury
September 24, 2024, 6:12 AM

This article was reprinted with permission from Virginia Mercury.

With early voting now underway in Virginia, former President Donald Trump appears to have warmed up to the practice of sending out mail-in ballots to voters for the November general election — a position contrary to his many deprecatory comments regarding mail-in voting. ... “In this election we must use every appropriate tool to beat the radical left Democrats, that’s why I am urging every Virginia patriot to vote early, and don’t wait,” Trump said during a telephone rally hosted by Gov. Glenn Youngkin Sunday evening. “You’ve heard a lot about voting by mail, but that’s what we have right now.”

On the 15-minute call, Trump asked Republican voters to cast their ballots “either by mail, early in person or on Election Day.” ... “We have long term voting, we used to have one day, paper ballots, all the things that you know we want to do, but you’re in the first group and I am asking you to get your friends, get your family, get everyone you know and make a plan to vote for Trump,” the GOP’s presidential nominee said.

Virginia is one of just three states — the other two being Minnesota and South Dakota — where early voting started on Friday, 45 days before the Nov. 5 election. At least 59,686 Virginians have since cast their ballots as of Sunday evening, according to data from the Virginia Public Access Project. ... With just 895 returned ballots, mail-in voting marked just a fraction of the total number of votes cast by that time.

Trump has consistently spoken against mail-in voting on the campaign trail while spouting conspiracy theories and falsely claiming that the 2020 presidential election that he lost to Democrat Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes had been stolen from him.

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