With GOP ‘failing’ to persuade voters to use mail ballots, conservative group launches new strategy

HARRISBURG — Frustrated by state and national Republican efforts to tout mail-in voting, a conservative Pennsylvania group is launching an initiative to personally reach half a million likely GOP voters in 2024.

Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania CEO Cliff Maloney, a Delaware County native and national Republican operative, on Wednesday announced the Pennsylvania Chase project, which hopes to have workers knock on voters’ doors across the state in the 50 days leading up to the Nov. 5 presidential election.

Mr. Maloney said the effort stems from his frustration with the Pennsylvania and national Republican parties’ failure to significantly increase mail-in voting by GOP voters.

“They’re just failing and they’re not failing lightly,” he told PennLive.

In this year’s municipal election, more than 1 million state voters requested mail-in ballots with Democrats representing about 75% of those requests.

Republican voters have been told repeatedly in recent years by many state and congressional GOP lawmakers, former President Donald Trump and conservative media outlets not to trust mail-in voting.

A growing number of Republicans, though, are arguing that the party can’t surrender mail-in voting and, ultimately, elections to Democrats even as the GOP works to change the mail-in process in states.

There have been some Republican efforts to encourage mail-in voting, but Mr. Maloney said the results have been disappointing. “I’m not just going to sit around and waste my time,” he said.

“It’s impacting our races so much that we have to adapt to the strategy, or we have to adopt this strategy to adapt to the rules because the GOP state party and GOP nationally . . . is failing,” Mr. Maloney said.

Mr. Maloney said he was unveiling the Pennsylvania Chase now to start fundraising toward a goal of $2 million that would finance a “full deployment team” to urge GOP voters who have requested mail-in ballots to return them to county election offices.

The focus, Mr. Maloney said, would be on voters who live in districts that have GOP candidates in competitive state House and Senate races. Pennsylvania Chase aims to knock on doors starting 50 days from the 2024 election, meaning that it would have to average 10,000 doors a day to reach its 500,000 goal.

Mr. Maloney said he is convinced that canvassing for GOP legislative candidates and encouraging mail-in voting will also help candidates higher up on the ticket, such as for the U. S. Senate and White House.

Republicans, he said, “have got a shot statewide” if they reach 33% of mail- in ballots returned, compared to return rates now that hover in the 20s.