How Trump changed his stance on absentee and mail voting — which he used to blame for election fraud
Former President Donald Trump announced a major change in a long-held position, and it's one that could boost his numbers at the ballot box this fall.
With little fanfare, in a post on Truth Social last Friday evening, Trump urged supporters to use early and absentee voting methods.
"ABSENTEE VOTING, EARLY VOTING, AND ELECTION DAY VOTING ARE ALL GOOD OPTIONS. REPUBLICANS MUST MAKE A PLAN, REGISTER, AND VOTE!" Trump wrote.
The post — a marked shift in Trump's rhetoric about voting practices — is the result of a monthslong effort by advisers close to the former president and external groups, CBS News has learned.
Senior advisers have been encouraging him to embrace votes "no matter how they come," according to a high-ranking Republican source with knowledge of the conversations.
"He understands that a lot of his supporters want to get out and vote for him, and that's a resource advantage to us," the source said.
Trump has opposed early, absentee and mail voting for years, blaming the practices for election fraud and conditioning voters to distrust those methods. He has repeatedly called only for in-person voting on Election Day and paper ballots, even though he has routinely used early voting.
"We have to get rid of mail-in ballots because once you have mail-in ballots, you have crooked elections," Trump said in his victory speech after the Iowa caucuses in January.
One of the key factors in bringing Trump around on early and mail-in voting was the data advisers were able to show him that suggested the campaign could effectively broaden its outreach to swing voters in battleground states if the Republican base was comfortable with voting early.
Advisers believe this would enable Trump to level the playing field with Mr. Biden on Election Day, since Democrats have historically benefitted from early and absentee voting.
However, it remains to be seen whether Trump can consistently encourage early-voting efforts leading up to the election. There are already signs that old habits may lead to some mixed messaging. On Thursday night, in an interview with Newsmax, Trump said elections need to be brought back to "paper ballots."
"You need voter ID and same-day voting," Trump said. Most ballots cast in the U.S. have a paper record — 93% did in 2020, according to the Brennan Center.
Voter behavior shifted dramatically in 2020: more Americans embraced early voting as the coronavirus pandemic complicated and depressed in-person voting.
Sixty-nine percent of voters nationwide cast their ballot either by mail or voted early in the 2020 election, making it the highest rate of nontraditional voting in a presidential election, according to the Census.
In addition to the change in Trump's rhetoric, Republicans will have to contend with a widening chasm between the two parties on support for absentee and early voting. Overall, the gap between Democrats and Republicans on early voting has increased, although it varies by state, says Kabir Khanna, CBS News' deputy director of Elections & Data Analytics.
For example, Pennsylvania — a key battleground — has exhibited of the largest party splits by vote method. In 2020, Mr. Biden won the mail-in and absentee votes by over 50 points, while Trump won the Election Day vote by over 30 points. Ultimately, Mr. Biden narrowly won the state by a margin of 1.2%.
However, in other battleground states where voting by mail has been more common in recent years, both parties tend to take advantage of early voting.
In Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas, the vast majority of ballots for both candidates were cast ahead of Election Day in 2020 — upwards of 90% depending on the state, meaning most Biden and Trump voters cast their ballots early in these four states in the height of the pandemic. Texas has a long in-person early-voting period but strictly limits mail-in voting.
Still, Republican voters in these states tend to favor voting in person more than voting by mail these days, Khanna says.
"In Georgia and North Carolina, more Trump voters than Biden voters showed up to vote early in person in 2020," Khanna said. "Persuading them to vote absentee may be a bigger lift for the campaign."
The shift in Trump's rhetoric comes also as new leadership at the Republican National Committee has made revitalizing absentee and early voting programs, known as ABEV for short, a top priority.
The RNC's existing program, titled "Bank Your Vote," was launched in 2023 and included websites educating voters in all 50 states about how to vote early.
The embrace of early voting practices was met with open arms by Republican groups that lobbied Trump advisers for a change and stressed that more needed to be done ahead of November.
Jessica Anderson, the president of the conservative super PAC Sentinel Action Fund, which focuses heavily on turning out early and absentee voters, said an embrace of ABEV programs would be a game changer for Republicans in the 2024 presidential race.
"President Trump's embrace of early and absentee voting should be a clarion call for conservatives to unite behind this winning strategy for 2024," Anderson said. "We can no longer go into Election Day hundreds of thousands of votes behind because we refuse to adapt to the rules on the ground — as much as we may not like them."
Kabir Khanna contributed to this report.
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