By Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb
Republican officials throughout the country are reacting with growing alarm to President Donald Trump’s attacks on mail-in ballots, saying his unsubstantiated claims of mass voting fraud are already corroding the views of GOP voters, who may ultimately choose not to vote at all if they can’t make it to the polls come November.
Behind the scenes, top Republicans are urging senior Trump campaign officials to press the President to change his messaging and embrace mail-in voting, warning that the party could lose the battle for control of Congress and the White House if he doesn’t change his tune, according to multiple GOP sources. Trump officials, sources said, are fully aware of the concerns.
The impact could be detrimental to the GOP up and down the ticket, according to a bevy of Republican election officials, field operatives, pollsters and lawmakers who are watching the matter closely. Every vote will count in critical battleground states, they argue, fearful that deterring GOP voters from choosing a convenient option to cast their ballots could ultimately sway the outcome of races that are decided by a couple of percentage points.
And with the coronavirus pandemic potentially bound to get worse in the fall, voting by mail is becoming an increasingly popular option since many voters may prefer not to wait in long lines at polling stations. That will leave Democrats with a major advantage if their voters send their ballots by mail while Republican voters forgo that option simply because they are listening to the concerns of the President.
In Wisconsin, a state that was central to Trump’s narrow 2016 victory, Republicans were “begging our voters” to vote absentee when the pandemic first hit, said Rohn Bishop, Republican Party chairman in Fond du Lac County, where Trump will need to drive up GOP turnout in November.
“Then the President has some tweets and gets upset with mail-in balloting and we dropped the issue like a hot potato, and that’s where I think we’re making a mistake,” Bishop said. “Our voters are running away from it. That kind of terrifies me.”
Bishop added bluntly: “I’m getting aggravated because I think we’re only hurting ourselves. … Anything that ties an arm behind my back, I don’t like that.”
Bishop’s concerns are shared by Republican officials at the county and state level — as well as ones who are deeply involved with the national party.