Key question for 2024 GOP presidential hopefuls.

Are you ready for the challenge of winning the general election under the present voting system? This is the fundamental question that any candidate vying for the Republican nomination for president of the United States in 2024 must answer. Yet, it has gone largely unaddressed, at least publicly, as the field spars over significant but ultimately subordinate issues.

An inability to answer this question clearly, compellingly, and convincingly imperils Republican odds of retaking the White House, no matter how favorable their prospects might look come next November. It is incumbent on anyone who wants to earn the Republican presidential nomination to answer this question at the outset, and to operate accordingly.

Over the last two election cycles, Republicans lost in historically aberrant if not unprecedented ways. That, or they underachieved relative to what conditions on the ground would have suggested. Political analysts have pointed to numerous factors to explain why the results broke the way they did, but perhaps the one constant in the presidential and midterm elections was that they were both held under a radically transformed voting system.

As Americans well know, we are lightyears removed from the election days of old — singular days when people voted in person, on paper ballots, after presenting identification. Now, we have mass mail-in elections, conducted over weeks, where those voting in person often do so on electronic machines, and with lax identification standards.

New Norms

Democrats largely developed and long fought for this system, willing it into existence under the cover of Covid-19. Naturally, they have successfully manipulated and exploited the voting regime they made.

• Ballot harvesting is becoming an accepted norm. Candidates not only have to earn votes but figure out how to collect as many votes as they possibly can.
• “Zuckerbucks” continue to loom over our contests as well, despite bans in many states.
• The Biden administration is working to leverage federal agencies to mobilize presumed Democrat voters as well.

What is the plan to combat Democrat control over election machinery?

Prepare for Lawfare

Lawfare is also now an integral part of our election system. Republicans have started to devote significantly greater attention and resources to the litigation game, but to catch up to Democrats will require a long-term, sustained effort, backed with real money.

Are Republican candidates devising comprehensive election lawfare strategies right now to both aggressively target existing election chicanery and stave off that which is to come — with the courage and intellectual heft behind it needed to win in the face of an unrelenting and calculating opposition?

Daunting Challenges

These in-built challenges exist before even discussing election fraud, and the imperative for a Republican candidate to exhaust every available means to prevent it, and in the absolute worst case to detect and mitigate it — this at a time when voting happens at further remove from the election booth than ever before, making finding and proving fraud all the more difficult.

Layer on top of these issues the broader forces any such candidate will be up against, and the prospect of winning becomes even more daunting.

a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.

This “cabal” will re-engage in 2024 and redouble its election “fortification” efforts, perhaps especially in “controlling the flow of information” — this is a daunting challenge for any Republican candidate.