GOP Embraces Ballot Harvesting, Some Republicans Hesitant

Republicans Embrace Ballot Harvesting as Key Election Strategy

As the 2024 election cycle draws near, it appears that Republicans are recognizing ballot harvesting as an integral part of any successful election strategy.

However, opinions on the decision to give in and use ballot harvesting are mixed.

While campaigns are already well underway, the much anticipated 2024 presidential election cycle won’t officially begin until the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 22, 2024. But while Super Tuesday is only tentatively scheduled to take place on March 5 of next year, debates on the pros and cons of ballot harvesting and mail-in ballots have already begun.

Republicans have spent years decrying the practice of mail-in ballots and ballot harvesting, but they are now realizing that, in order to win, they have to play.

Ballot harvesting is a process by which third-parties can collect completed mail-in ballots from voters and deliver them in bulk to a drop box or local elections office.

Although every state allows absentee voting, the rules and guidelines vary greatly between states.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 31 states allow voters to authorize someone else to return their ballot on their behalf. Of those, nine limit the number of ballots an authorized person can return, and four limit the amount of time those ballots can remain in the authorized person’s custody before being returned.

Alabama has a law on the books that prohibits anyone except the voter from returning their ballot, and in Mississippi, several civil rights organizations are suing over a recent state law that would ban ballot harvesting.

Data compiled by USA Facts in 2021 show that three states—Florida, Georgia, and Iowa—decreased the number of ballot drop boxes allowed per county and established regulations requiring drop boxes to be constantly monitored by county election officials. Conversely, Illinois, Kentucky, and Virginia passed laws that increased the number of drop box locations.

By the Numbers

To understand the power of ballot harvesting and mail-in ballots in an election, one must look at the numbers.

A November 2020 study released by Pew Research showed that 54 percent of voters cast their ballots in person during the November 2020 presidential election, compared with 46 percent who voted by mail-in or absentee ballot. Only 27 percent said they voted in person on Election Day, and an equal amount said they voted by way of in-person early voting.

While 37 percent of former President Donald Trump’s voters cast their ballots in person on Election Day, only 17 percent of Biden voters did the same.

Where 30 percent of Trump supporters voted early, only 24 percent of Biden’s voters cast ballots in person before Election Day.

Most noteworthy, while 32 percent of Trump supporters voted by way of mail-in or absentee ballot, more than half of Biden’s voters, 58 percent, cast their ballots through the mail-in method.

Polling data released by the U.S. Census Bureau in April 2021 showed that 69 percent of voters in the 2020 presidential election voted by mail or early voting, making it the “highest rate of nontraditional voting for a presidential election” recorded.

In 2016, for comparison, 40 percent of Americans used mail-in ballots during the presidential election.

Republicans Reconsider

After years of criticizing ballot harvesting and a push toward mail-in ballots, some Republicans are beginning to reconsider their party’s unbending resistance to both practices.

On Nov. 29, 2022, on Truth Social, Trump wrote in all capital letters, “YOU CAN NEVER HAVE FAIR & FREE ELECTIONS WITH MAIL-IN BALLOTS — NEVER, NEVER, NEVER. WON’T AND CAN’T HAPPEN!!!”

Three months later, in a February fundraising email, Trump asked supporters to chip in for his “ballot harvesting fund,” writing, “Either we ballot harvest where we can, or you can say goodbye to America!”

On May 6, 2021, Republican Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis signed SB 90 into law, effectively banning ballot harvesting in the state. At a Nov. 3, 2021, press conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, DeSantis said he wanted to make ballot harvesting a third-degree felony.

However, as a contender for the Republican nomination for the 2024 election cycle, DeSantis assured a voter at a campaign stop in Iowa on June 1, “We’re going to do ballot harvesting.”

“I’m doing it. Yes,” he said. “I’m not going to fight with one hand tied behind my back.”

During a September 2020 interview with C-SPAN, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel criticized hasty expansions of mail-in voting and ballot harvesting under the guise of public safety during the COVID-19 pandemic without first putting a system in place to ensure the integrity of the process.

She said Trump was right in saying “Democrats have inserted havoc and chaos” into the election cycle.

In a Fox News interview two years later, McDaniel said Republican voters need to start voting 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.”

In June, McDaniel started the GOP’s new “Bank Your Vote” initiative. In a video promoting the project, McDaniel stressed that the GOP is going to join in the ballot harvesting practice only as a means to “protect the vote,” and because it’s necessary for Republicans to adopt similar strategies since Democrats have already established a successful advantage.

On June 20, Talking Points Memo reported that when Mike Lindell discussed the topic of ballot harvesting with McDaniel, he told her, “That’s the dumbest plan I’ve ever heard.”

Her response, he said, was that the RNC has to “do everything we can to win.”

Lindell told The Epoch Times that he didn’t want to argue with McDaniel, but he said the RNC has made a huge mistake.

“How do you just change your tune and hope states will go for it and make ballot harvesting legal?” Lindell said. “This is not the right approach. It’s a desperation move.”

Republicans Weigh In

Michael Thompson, chairman of the Lee County Republican Executive Committee and Election Integrity Committee Member of the Republican Party of Florida, said that the words “ballot harvesting” “strike fear into many Republicans.”

“They should just stay in their lane,” Thompson told The Epoch Times. “The one thing Republicans never seem to learn is that Democrats are constantly doing things to set them up.”

Thompson said he believes Republicans are embracing ballot harvesting and mail-in ballots only “because Democrats have been so successful at it.”

“But my concern is that Democrats are going to be in there monitoring Republicans to make sure they’re doing it right and if they aren’t doing it right they’re going to accuse Republicans of trying to rig the elections,” he said. “No matter what you think of Democrats, they’ve always out-maneuvered Republicans.”

“It’s too little too late,” Thompson concluded. “It’s a bad idea to jump into ballot harvesting to try to win an election when your opponent wrote the book on it.”

Corey Gibson said he’s excited by the idea of leveling the ballot harvest playing field. In his position as national executive director of development for Rethink! GOP, he will be playing an integral role in creating what he said will be a winning strategy.

“Ballot harvesting is something that Democrats have been doing forever and the Republicans simply haven’t been competing with them,” Gibson told The Epoch Times, explaining that the project began when “some Gen Z folks got together” and began discussing how exhausting it was watching the GOP continue to lose the ballot harvest game.

As founder of the America First PACT, Gibson has already assembled a skilled “army of social media influencers” he can “loop in to help create the initiative.”

“We’re the first national ballot harvesting project,” Gibson said.

“We’ve been able to unite Gen Z leadership with ‘established,’ rather than ‘establishment,’ leaders and champions for voter integrity. Now, like with everything else in life, it’s a matter of fundraising.”

While some are concerned about the optics of Republicans’ embracing a practice they were condemning not long ago, Gibson said he has come in contact with many who are relieved that the party is finally competing with Democrats in this way.

“By and large, everybody hates ballot harvesting,” he said. “But they also ha