South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
GOP activists tout anti-fraud tactics
Told vote in person or hold mail ballots until Election Day
ATLANTA — Republican activists who believe the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump have crafted a plan that, in their telling, will thwart cheating in this year’s midterm elections.
The strategy: Vote in person on Election Day or — for voters who receive a mailed ballot — hold onto it and hand it in at a polling place or election office on Nov. 8.
The plan is based on unfounded conspiracy theories that fraudsters will manipulate voting systems to rig results for Democrats once they have seen how many Republican votes have been returned early. There has been no evidence of any such widespread fraud.
If enough voters are dissuaded from casting ballots early, it could lead to long lines on Election Day and would push back processing of those latearriving mailed ballots. Those ballots likely would not get counted until the next day or later.
“It just slows everything down,” said Noah Praetz, the former election clerk in Cook County, Illinois, who now advises local election offices on best practices and security. “In many places, if you don’t get mail ballots in hand until Election Day, you are not counting them until after Election Day.”
There is no evidence of widespread fraud, cheating or manipulation of voting machines in the 2020 election. Exhaustive reviews in the states disputed by Trump upheld Democrat Joe Biden’s win, and legal challenges pursued by the former president and his allies were rejected by numerous judges, including ones appointed by Republicans.
That hasn’t stopped conspiracy theories that have spread over the last two years, fueled by Trump, allies including MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and a crop of Republican candidates seeking office this year. The calls to hold onto ballots until the last minute have grown louder in recent weeks, according to an Associated Press review of social media accounts.
“It’s a lot easier to catch any fraud,” Lindell, who has promoted the last-minute voting strategy on podcasts, told the AP in a recent interview.
The strategy push by conservatives comes after the use of mailed ballots soared during the 2020 election amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The end of pandemic restrictions, Trump’s attacks on mailed ballots and new voting restrictions in some Republican-led states has led to a decline in the use of mailed ballots this year, but it still remains popular for many voters.
Discouraging early voting and encouraging voters to hold onto their mailed ballots until Election Day runs counter to efforts by most campaigns. Republican and Democratic candidates alike typically want to have as many ballots in hand as possible heading into Election Day so they can focus their efforts on getting stragglers to the polls and persuading undecided voters.
The dueling approaches have resulted in a confusing array of messages for Republican voters.
In Georgia, a recent online flyer by one grassroots group read: “Voting in person and on Election Day is the only way to overwhelm the system.” A conservative group in the state, VoterGA, told its members to “protect” their votes by applying for an absentee ballot early and waiting to deliver it until Election Day.
The chair of the state Republican Party, David Shafer, recently tweeted on the party’s official account: “Voting in-person early is just as safe as voting inperson on Election Day!”
The cross-messaging also is hitting Republican voters in Arizona, which has highstakes races this year for U.S. Senate, governor and secretary of state. Mail voting has been popular there among voters of both parties for years.
State Sen. Wendy Rogers, a Republican who backed a partisan review of 2020 ballots in Maricopa County, told viewers of One America News Network this month that “we need to vote on the last day, the day of Election Day, so they don’t know how much to cheat by.”
But her party’s top candidates — who also have embraced false claims about the 2020 election — have recently tried to counter that strategy.
“If you have a mail-in ballot, I think that you should mail it in. I want people to vote,” Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for governor, told reporters this month. “And vote whatever way you want to vote, but vote.”
Lake has been among those calling for a rollback in mailed ballots and early voting, favoring instead a single day of in-person voting. Blake Masters, the Republican candidate for Senate in Arizona who also has Trump’s support, said it’s fine to vote by mail if that’s what a voter prefers.
“I want to know results on election night,” Masters told reporters earlier this month. “I’m telling people vote in person, if you can. If not, vote early and return via mail. And let’s know the result.”