Former President Donald Trump is urging GOP voters to use “every appropriate tool to beat the Democrats,” which the presumptive Republican nominee says includes absentee balloting and early voting.
On Tuesday, the Republican National Committee and the former president’s 2024 campaign announced the launch of their “Swamp the Vote USA” effort.
It’s a significant reversal from Trump’s stance of four years ago when he condemned mail-in balloting and early-in-person voting and said they were to blame for what he argued was substantial election fraud that led to his defeat at President Joe Biden’s hands.
“Republicans must win, and we will use every appropriate tool to beat the Democrats because they are destroying our country,” argued Trump in his statement.
He emphasized that “whether you vote absentee, by mail, early in-person or on election day, we will protect the vote. We make sure your ballot is secure, and your voice is heard. We must swamp the radical Democrats with a massive turnout. The way to win is to swamp them; if we swamp them with votes, they can’t cheat. You need to make a plan, register, and vote in any way possible. We have got to get your vote.”
In the past few election cycles, Democrats have voted early in greater numbers than Republicans. At the same time, Republicans have tended to come out in greater numbers on November Election Day.
While former President Trump has long criticized early voting, the Republican National Committee, led by previous chair Ronna McDaniel, launched a push for it a year ago known as “Bank the Vote.”
On Tuesday, the Trump campaign highlighted that “Swamp the Vote USA is the successor to the RNC’s Bank Your Vote program.”
Donald Trump’s position on early voting in recent months has remained unclear.
At a Michigan rally three months ago, Trump told supporters that early voting was a “hoax” and “totally corrupt.”
The former president previously compared early voting to “stealing” the vote, including at an April rally in Pennsylvania.
Last month, at a massive rally in New Jersey, Trump said, “Mail-in voting is largely corrupt.”
However, during the same event, she urged supporters to “get an absentee or mail-in ballot, vote early, or vote on Election Day.”
He has also emphasized a couple of times on social media posts that early voting is critical.
Biden campaign spotlights Trump’s early voting reversal
“Donald Trump told his supporters as recently as February that mail-in voting was ‘totally corrupt’ — last September he proposed eliminating mail-in voting altogether. Trump has spent years saying early and mail-in voting was ‘fraudulent,’ ‘cheating,’ and ‘crooked.’ Apparently, his campaign feels otherwise. Trump should own up to the lies about voting and elections he’s been telling for years,” said James Singer, campaign spokesperson.
Donald Trump’s campaign says the new effort to promote early voting is a portion of the recently announced Trump Force 47, the RNC’s neighbor-to-neighbor grassroots organizing program “that focuses on mobilizing highly-targeted voters in critical precincts across the battleground states and districts.”
It comes as the RNC and Trump play catch-up with Biden’s campaign and the DNC regarding get-out-the-vote efforts (known as GOTV) and grassroots outreach.
While Donald Trump’s fundraising has soared in the wake of his conviction last week in the first criminal trial of a former or current president, and although he holds the edge over Joe Biden in the latest polling in the crucial battleground states that will likely decide their 2024 rematch, the RNC and Trump are faxing a deficit when it comes to ground game operations.
