ATLANTA (AP) — In Georgia’s Senate runoff, Republicans once more met the realities of giving Democrats a head start they could not overcome.
According to tallies from the secretary of state, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock built a lead of more than 320,000 votes heading into Tuesday’s election. By almost a 2-1 ratio in mailed votes, he beat Republican Herschel Walker and had a lead of more than 250,000 in-person early votes. The challenger was defeated by almost 97,000 votes, despite Walker winning more votes on Election Day.
It was only the latest example of how Republicans have handed Democrats an advantage in balloting due to former President Donald Trump’s lies about the risks of mail voting. Conservative conspiracy theorists advised GOP voters to wait till Election Day to cast their ballots. They spun stories about how this would protect Democrats from manipulating voting machines to steal the election.
There was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election or this year’s midterms.
The problem with this strategy is the possibility of unexpected glitches on Election Day.
In Arizona’s most populous county, for example, a printer error created long lines at several voting locations on Nov. 8. Although Republicans lost several state contests, including the governor and secretary-of-state elections, Maricopa County officials claimed that all voters were allowed to vote and that all ballots were counted.
The race to be Arizona’s attorney general is headed for an automatic recount, with the GOP candidate trailing by just more than 500 votes.
On Election Day, northern Nevada was hit by a snowstorm that made it difficult to travel. The Republican candidate for Senate lost by 8,000 votes. In Georgia’s runoff, rain drenched the state as the disproportionately Republican crowd finally made its way to the polls.
Overall, the Republican turnout in the midterms was quite strong, which suggests that the party had no problems getting its voters to vote. The GOP had hoped to retake the chamber in the next election, but the Georgia loss allowed Democrats to take over a Senate seat.
“We’ve got to put a priority on competing with Democrats from the start, beat them at their own game,” said Debbie Dooley, a Georgia tea party organizer who remains loyal to Trump but is critical of how he has talked about the U.S. election system.
In Washington, South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the second-ranking GOP leader, told reporters: “We’ve got to get better at turnout operations, especially in states that use mail-in balloting extensively.”
Ronna McDaniel (chairwoman of the Republican National Committee) stated in an interview with Fox News this week, that Republican voters must cast their ballots early.
“I have said this over and over again,” she said. “There were many in 2020 saying, ‘Don’t vote by mail, don’t vote early.’ And we have to stop that.”
McDaniel did not name the main person in 2020 who was attacking voting before Election Day — Trump.
When the U.S. went into lockdown during the March 2020 primaries, the nation’s voting system shifted heavily to mail. The then-president began to attack that manner of casting ballots, saying Democratic efforts to expand it could lead to “levels of voting that if, you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
Trump continued to make baseless claims that mail balloting would result in massive fraud. Trump then blamed this imaginary mass fraud on his loss in November, even though his Department of Justice did not find any such organized activity. Trump’s lies helped spur the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, new GOP-backed laws tightening election regulations in Republican-led states and a wave of Republican candidates running for statewide posts in the 2022 elections who embraced his conspiracy theories.
Academic research has shown that mail voting increases turnout but doesn’t benefit either party. However, campaigns are often pushing it. Once they have secured some mail votes, they can concentrate their turnout operations on those who aren’t voting and get them to vote before Election Day.
Mail voting is also a way to protect yourself from bad weather, equipment malfunctions, traffic jams, and other problems that could deter voters.
States like Florida and Utah had strong mail voting systems and they have continued to expand their reach. States like Colorado, which mail every voter a paper ballot, found that older conservative-leaning voters were more likely to mail their ballots back.
Even though mail voting was never a key part of the GOP’s identity prior to Trump’s 2020 election, the GOP continues to be skeptical. Even though conservatives are against expanding mail voter, they warn that the party needs to face up to its reality.
“There is a tension on the right between folks who say, ‘They’re the rules and you’ve got to play by them,’ and those who say, ‘No, you do not,’” said Jason Snead of the Honest Elections Project, a conservative group that advocates for tighter restrictions on mail voting. “I think there’s a lot of reevaluation and reassessment going on.”
“You can stand on principle and say, ‘I am not going to do this,’ but it’s a drag on performance if you do,” Snead said.
He observed that Republicans who have strong early voting programs such as Govs. were more likely to win. Brian Kemp in Georgia and Ron DeSantis in Florida, easily won their elections while those who echoed Trump’s conspiracy theories mostly lost.
The worst performance for conspiracy theorists in election politics was in Pennsylvania. There, the Republican candidate for governor lost nearly 15 percent to protesters attacking the U.S. Capitol. The GOP also lost control of the lower house and a seat in the Senate.
Democrats outvoted Republicans by mail more than three to one, winning 69% of nearly 1.25 million ballots. This was nearly one-fourth the total of almost 5.4 million ballots.
Republicans who control the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed a massive overhaul of the state’s voting system in 2019, allowing anyone to cast a ballot by mail. Many Republicans were hesitant to vote for Trump’s 2020 plan, as he began to denigrate mail voting. GOP lawmakers and their aides have since challenged the law in court and inflated the number mail ballots rejected due to technicalities.
The state’s top party officials are currently reassessing.
“Republican attitudes on mail-in ballots are going to have to change,” said Sam DeMarco, chair of the Allegheny County GOP. “President Trump is running across the country telling people not to use it, and it’s crushing us.”
