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A year after getting its clock cleaned thanks in large part due to abdicating mail-in ballots, everyone in the Republican Party is getting in on the ballot harvesting action.
One of the latest entrants is Turning Point USA, which, through its Turning Point Action 501c4 plans to build the “first ever conservative ballot-chasing army,” according to plans obtained by The Spectator — and it won’t come cheap; Turning Point Action estimates that the total cost of its operation will be $108.6 million.
“We have to realize that whatever our misgivings about chain of custody and lax signature verification standards, when we refuse to play the early vote game we are not playing on an even field with Democrats,” Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for Turning Point Action, told Cockburn. “Turning Point Action is making a significant investment in data, field operatives, and technology in America’s key swing states and swing districts, building out the infrastructure now so that we are ready in 2024. We can’t wait on the RNC or other groups. We have to go now, in coordination with other like-minded groups.”
Kolvet cites recent polling from outlets like the New York Times to suggest that 2024 is the perfect time for conservative-focused ballot harvesting. “We have the energy, we have the ideas, we have the momentum, but we need the machine. That’s what we’re working to ensure is in place come election month, 2024,” he said.
The premise of TP Action’s ambitious ballot harvesting plan is that Republicans have been getting smoked in three key states — Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin — in large part due to Democrats out-hustling them on early mail.
That’s not the entire story, as some point out. The GOP used to dominate early voting and vote-by-mail until former president Donald Trump turned many of their voters against the concepts in 2020. And these three states haven’t been uniformly bad for Republicans.
In 2022, Georgia was a rare bright spot for Republicans, who won every single statewide race except the Senate seat, where many blame the former president for saddling Republicans with a bad candidate in football legend Herschel Walker.
Michael Duncan, a political consultant and podcaster closely aligned with Senator Mitch McConnell, says that ballot chasing is necessary, but that there’s an effort underway to minimize the harmful impact of bad candidates endorsed by Trump.
“‘Ballot chasing’ as a panacea is a cope for Trumpworld people who told our voters mail votes wouldn’t count and then were shocked we got crushed by mail-in votes,” he said. “And now in hot dog meme fashion they’ve got a solution. Ballot chasing!”
“Should we ballot chase? Absolutely,” Duncan said. “But they’re using it to absolve themselves of the actual problem of our party fielding shitty candidates.” Pointing to New Hampshire, Duncan notes that the state has “virtually no mail or early vote and we got fucking boatraced. Why? It wasn’t because we didn’t have a ballot chase program,” but rather because the Republicans nominated, for example, a Senate candidate who believes that the state’s wildly popular Republican governor is a “Chinese Communist sympathizer” whose family “supports terrorism.”
Another Republican strategist unaligned in the ballot harvesting wars tells Cockburn that Turning Point Action’s unsuccessful track record in Arizona, where the group worked closely with candidates such as Kari Lake, doesn’t inspire confidence in further efforts. “In their own pitch document, Turning Point claims responsibility for the shit show that is Arizona GOP politics. Why anyone would want to outsource that to Georgia and Wisconsin is beyond me.”
Despite some doubts, Turning Point Action is forging ahead. Its documents, which concede that Lake lost last year’s race for governor (claims that Lake is unsuccessfully litigating in court), lay out ambitious plans for over 1,000 full-time ballot chasers in the three key states it identified.
In Arizona, it wants 500 full-time staff each chasing at least 500 ballots, with a goal of over 250,000 early votes; in Georgia, it wants 800 full-time representatives, each chasing at least 300 votes for a goal of at least 240,000 early votes; finally, in Wisconsin, its goal is to hire 350 full-time ballot chasers, each responsible for at least 300 ballots, with a goal of at least 105,000 early votes. With plans to pay each ballot harvester $60,000 a year, those staffing goals don’t seem out of reach. The staff will also be equipped with Turning Point Action’s latest mobile app to track their efforts in real time.
In recent weeks, it seems like everyone on the GOP side has been getting in on the ballot harvesting action. Beyond its latest proposal, Turning Point Action recently pledged at least $5 million to ballot chasing efforts led by Scott Presler, one of the party’s top voter registration activists. Former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake called this partnership “excellent news.”
While TP Action is throwing some shade at the Republican National Committee RNC for not having any ballot chasing efforts of its own, the RNC actually just launched BankYourVote.com, as part of its expanded early voting measures. “If we don’t vote early, we’re giving the Democrats a head start, but when Republicans vote early, we win,” RNC chair Ronna McDaniel says in the initiative’s launch video.
Last month, Lake herself launched what she calls the “LARGEST ballot chasing operation in American history.” This news has been warmly welcomed by the newest member of the GOP’s establishment, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“We can play by the same rules, and we’re going to start working hard to get out there and make sure that every single ballot that ends up in someone’s mailbox is filled out and returned,” Lake told Newsmax.
At this rate, Cockburn expects about 500 more ballot chasing initiatives to be launched between now and Election Day 2024. We will be keeping an eye on these developments.
