ATLANTA -- When Josh McKoon traveled the state campaigning to become the next state GOP chairman, he didn’t mince words about the early-voting advantage that Democrats have painstakingly built in Georgia.
Tired of watching Democrats capitalize on early voting, McKoon became the latest in a parade of state Republican leaders who want to break from a GOP tradition that focuses primarily on Election Day turnout.
“We’ve got to recognize there are people who want to vote by absentee ballot and don’t have much confidence in our electronic voting machines — and we have to reach them,” McKoon said in an interview. “We need to focus on getting them to make a plan to vote.”
In borrowing the Democratic “make a plan to vote” catchphrase of the 2020 election — Stacey Abrams even made a how-to guide that ended with that message — state Republicans are undertaking a consequential strategic shift.
After years of ridiculing absentee and early voting as a vehicle for fraud and conceit, McKoon and his allies now embrace a different message ahead of the 2024 election.
“To win close elections,” Republican National Committee Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel said, “we need to close the gap on pre-Election Day voting.”
In a sense, this approach isn’t novel. McDaniel pleaded with skeptical Georgia Republicans in 2020 to cast their ballots early in the dual U.S. Senate runoffs that decided control of the chamber.
Then-Vice President Mike Pence was jeered at a 2020 campaign stop in Georgia when he urged the crowd to cast their ballots early, even reciting the address of a nearby election office. One attendee told him to “go back to Washington.”
And Gov. Brian Kemp, a former state election chief, wasn’t shy about pressing his supporters to cast their ballots early during last year’s rematch against Abrams.
But after years of unsubstantiated claims and conspiracy theories from former President Donald Trump and his allies that mail-in ballots are rife with cheating, key Republicans are now working to persuade supporters to embrace mail-in voting.
It’s a stance that’s cost them in the past. Democrats in 2020 embraced laws during the height of the coronavirus pandemic that allowed Georgians to vote through drop boxes, mail-in ballots and three weeks of in-person early voting.
State Democrats partly credit the surge of absentee and early voting for Joe Biden’s narrow 2020 victory over Trump, which made him the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since 1992. Close wins by Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock followed in the 2021 U.S. Senate runoffs.
Biden received two-thirds of absentee votes in the 2020 election and held a 52%-47% advantage among all advance voters, including in-person early voters. That helped him overcome Trump’s edge on Election Day, when he won 60% of the vote.
A federal report released this month showed more Georgia voters cast their ballots in person before Election Day during the 2022 midterms than any other state except Texas, with 58% of voters participating during the three-week early period.
Early-voting turnout among Republicans was more than two times higher than the last midterm primary in 2018, thanks in part to GOP anger with their party’s electoral setbacks.
Still, turnout in Georgia declined slightly in November’s election compared with the 2018 midterms, from 54% to 52% of the voting-eligible population participating.
Mixed messages
Even Trump has changed his rhetoric — ever so slightly. The former president, who has long voted by mail, now tells Republicans they have “no choice” but to accept early voting. Yet he still habitually maligns the method.
At the state GOP convention last month in Columbus, Trump called early voting “dishonest” and “corrupt” and repeated false conspiracy theories about the chain of custody of mail-in ballots in Georgia.
Other Republicans, such as Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, have urged voters to turn out before Election Day, including on “Vote Early Day” 10 days before the 2020 election.
“Georgia is a national leader in security, access and early-voting turnout. We encourage all campaigns to utilize all of their tools to be successful,” Raffensperger said.
Many Republicans say they feel most confident voting on Election Day, citing mistrust of Georgia’s three weeks of in-person early voting and absentee voting available to all.
However, on Election Day, everyone is required to cast ballots on large touchscreens manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems, which some conservatives also view with suspicion. Multiple investigations and lawsuits have debunked allegations of fraud, but critics say they’re concerned about ballot secrecy and the possibility of hacking.
“We need to do things the old-fashioned way of hand-counting hand-printed ballots at the precinct level with our friends and neighbors, who are Republicans and Democrats doing it together,” said Salleigh Grubbs, chairwoman for the Cobb County Republican Party. “People need to value their vote more, enough to make a plan to vote.”
Already, the ground-level efforts are gearing up. The Lumpkin County GOP’s “Unite the Right” initiative urges Republicans to vote by mail and then track their ballots online to make sure they’re counted.
Ed Henderson, the secretary of the Rabun County GOP, proudly notes early-voting turnout in his mountainous North Georgia territory is routinely among the highest in the state.
With the 2024 election looming, he said he’ll continue to support a local “souls to the polls” Sunday early-voting effort, an initiative to make sure GOP voters return their absentee ballots and other programs to promote early voting.
“One of the reasons why we didn’t carry the presidential vote is because Trump assailed early voting in the 2020 election,” Henderson said. “Hopefully, he will have a different attitude in 2024.”
