Republicans think voting by mail is a lie. The GOP needs to change that

Donald Trump is repeatedly sabotaging his own chances of winning and forcing the GOP to solve those problems for him, chasing the thrill of his surprise 2016 victory again.

Donald Trump lost in 2020 in part because he attacked mail-in ballots and mistrust of the messaging system. As a result, there is a Republican effort underway to restore confidence in mail-in voting in this election in hopes of showing voters how viable an option it is.

Four years ago, postal voting skyrocketed amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump then baabandoned postal voting as part of his effort to undermine the results of the presidential election, something that would become a key part of the latest campaign.

“It shouldn’t be voting by mail,” Trump said ahead of the 2020 election. “It should be: You go to a booth and proudly ship. Don’t send it in the mail where people pick it up – all kinds of bad things can happen.”

His lies about vote-by-mail fraud may have been a big part of why he lost in 2020 and why Republicans underperformed in 2022. Now, a full presidential term later, and the GOP is still looking to repair the damage that Trump did with him. lies That’s because early voting has begun nationwide for the November election.

The GOP is looking to repair the damage done by Trump

It’s also no surprise that 74 percent of Republicans believe vote-by-mail fraud was a problem in past elections, compared to just 34 percent of Democrats.

Mail-in voting is the most convenient option for many voters, and GOP groups recognize that convenience can help improve voter turnout.

This is, of course, an expensive endeavor, given that voters have been told by their political idol that their vote would not count if it were mailed in. GOP PACs are spending millions of dollars in battleground states to repair the reputation of mail-in voting in their base.

Other groups, such as Turning Point Action’s eight-figure investment, are more aggressively pursuing voter mobilization efforts in key states.

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“As President Trump has consistently said, voting by mail, early voting and voting on Election Day are all good options,” Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley said, apparently overwriting what the GOP nominee has actually said in the past four . years.

You don’t have to go any further than August to see what the former president had to say.

“The election is so broken. We have to go back and we have to change everything,” Trump said at a rally. “We want to get rid of postal voting.”

All of this effort for mail-in voting is money that could have been spent elsewhere if Trump hadn’t undermined mail-in voting in 2020 and then continued to undermine the entire electoral process.

The rise of mail-in voting and why Republicans should embrace it

Although postal voting declined in 2022 compared to the pandemic-hit 2020 election, 36% of voters still chose this method to cast their ballots. Even as rates declined, a significant divide remained between early voting Democrats and Republicans.

By 2020, postal voting had not consistently given any advantage to either party. Four years ago, as a result of Trump’s rhetoric about election security, GOP voters voted by mail at nearly half the rate of their Democratic counterparts.

Postal voting is not popular because of partisan differences; it is popular because it is convenient. It allows Americans to vote without having to travel to a polling place, as well as prevents a pressing personal issue from preventing someone from voting on Election Day.

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One might think that the Republican Party, whose voter base is more rural and often farther from the polls, would want to embrace it. These voters are more likely to vote if they have better access to the ballot and voted by mail at higher rates than regular voters in 2020. Half of rural polling places serve an area larger than 62 square miles, forcing voters to drive long time. distances to vote if not voting by mail.

Trump is hurting part of his voting base with his election lies.

The GOP continues to pay for Trump’s shortcomings

In the 2022 midterm elections, in which Republicans performed poorly, super PACs backed by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell were forced to spend hundreds of millions to boost problematic candidates, such as Herschel Walker, whom Trump had endorsed . That loss ultimately cost the GOP the Senate. All the while, Trump sat back and spent a little of his own political bank to fix his own mistakes.

This ties into a common theme, which is that Trump really doesn’t care about the success of the GOP, just that he remains the figurehead of the party.

Instead, he repeatedly sabotages his own chances of winning and forces the GOP to solve those problems for him, chasing the thrill of his surprise 2016 victory again.

Even as recently as this spring, Trump refused to admit that mail-in voting was a valid way to vote, as the Republican Party sought to encourage the practice nationwide for its own benefit. Most will admit that it is better than not voting at all, but the skeptical tone surrounding the practice does not encourage its supporters to believe that their votes will count.

Trump has a habit of shooting himself in the foot and the Republican Party has to come back and pay the hospital bill. Eventually, we may wake up and realize that most of these problems could be avoided if we simply elected another candidate. In the meantime, we will continue to lose and waste money doing this.

Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.