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Republican operatives working to boost Donald Trump in critical swing states like Pennsylvania are finding themselves increasingly hampered by his own rhetoric on mail-in voting.
Despite the ex-president seeking the White House for a third time, he is once again casting doubt on US election procedures and sabotaging his own voters’ trust in voting systems.
The Independent reported just last week how Trump-aligned influencers and operatives are already deployed across battleground states urging voters to sign up for mail-in ballots if they fear they will not be able to vote in person for whatever reason.
But Politico reported on Sunday that some of those operatives are growing increasingly frustrated with the rhetoric coming from the top of the ticket.
For months, Trump has cast doubt on early voting and mail-in voting in particular. He has baselessly derided ballot dropboxes, a commonly used practice, as epicenters of fraud, and he has told his supporters that opening up voting months in advance is “sad”.
The former president has also broadly referred to mail-in voting systems as “corrupt” in a way that could be seen as aimed at turning voters off from participating.
“Mail-in voting is totally corrupt,” he said in February. “Get that through your head.”
Now, it seems like the chickens are coming home to roost. Trump-aligned Republican operatives tell Politico that his rhetoric is actively disrupting multi-million dollar efforts aimed at his own election to the White House.
“You have to accept [early voting and mail-in voting] in order to have a chance to win. And that’s what we’re doing. We’ve been pushing these things like crazy,” Erie County GOP chair Tom Eddy told the news outlet.
But even state Republican leaders and national GOP officials acknowledge there’s a disconnect.
“It’s counterproductive,” added David Urban, a Pennsylvania GOP operative. “We’re kind of pushing a message, and then the president comes and says, ‘I’m not so big on [mail-in voting]” ... it’s [becoming] much more difficult to convince people.”
For their party, Trump’s own campaign officials have been treading a fine line: refusing to back away from his claims of fraud, while also pushing their voters to participate in these same systems their candidate has argued is largely meaningless due to the influence of widespread election fraud that he was unable to prove occurred in 2020.
“We have to play by the rules of the game until we can President Trump to push for same-day, election integrity, no-mail in ballots, paper ballots, and mandated voter ID across the country,” campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in February. “So if you live in an early-voting state, get out and vote early.”
