The Republican Party tries to embrace mail ballots for 2024 after four years of vilifying them

The Republican National Committee launched a persuasion campaign this week to convince the party’s voters to use mail ballots in 2024, after four years of GOP candidates — including a president — falsely claiming that route inevitably leads to election fraud.

The effort had a distinct take-your-medicine flavor. And party leaders winced while swallowing it.

RNC chair Ronna McDaniel spent 30 minutes Wednesday pitching mail ballots and “harvesting” — ballots collected by a third party for delivery to election officials. She was joined by Republican congressional leaders hoping to expand the party’s majority in the U.S. House and take control of the Senate.

Then she said this: “I’m not going to lie. I do not like ballot harvesting. I don’t think it’s a good practice. I don’t like having an election month.”

She’s not alone.

McDaniel acknowledged that Republicans — most notably former President Donald Trump before the 2020 election and after he lost — convinced a big chunk of the party’s base to distrust mail ballots.

“That certainly is a challenge, if you have people in your ecosystem saying don’t vote early or don’t vote by mail,” she said. “Those cross-messages do have an impact.”

That’s as close as she came to acknowledging that Republicans dug the hole they are now trying, reluctantly, to emerge from.

McDaniel said mail ballots give Democrat “a head start” in elections, leaving Republicans trying to catch up during in-person voting.

In the 2022 general election, with the jobs of Pennsylvania governor and senator on the line, just 11% of Republicans who voted cast mail ballots while 35% of Democratic voters used them.

“We have to change the culture among Republican voters,” McDaniel said.

Try that with the party’s politicians first.

Republican legislators in Harrisburg still cast mail ballots as a looming liability rather than a legitimate tactic.

Legislation that would help speed the process of counting mail ballots is pending in the Democrat-controlled state House, but it has little interest in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Republicans on the Senate State Government Committee in a hearing last month, while considering former Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt’s nomination to be secretary of state, seemed more interested in talking about mail ballot security than usage.

This mail-ballot two-step makes it easy to trip.

Lawrence Tabas, chair of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, told the state Senate in an April 2020 hearing that mail ballots were both “an important option” and “an increased risk of fraud.”

He said that while the RNC was running a persuasion campaign, urging party voters to cast mail ballots.

President Joe Biden won three out of four mail ballots cast in Pennsylvania in 2020.

Former electrician union leader John “Johnny Doc” Dougherty came oh-so-close Saturday to unseating the man he backed 18 months ago to replace him atop Local 98, Mark Lynch Jr.

Lynch won 48% of the vote in an election for a full term as the politically influential union’s business manager, while Todd Neilson, with Dougherty’s backing, took 46%.

A third candidate, Tim Browne, received 6%.

Local 98 will hold a June 24 runoff election between Lynch and Neilson.

Expect Dougherty and Neilson to court Browne and his supporters. Odds are Browne will lean Neilson’s way, since Lynch fired him shortly after taking over. Browne’s campaign included a fusillade of newsletters focused on what he saw as Lynch’s shortcomings as a leader.

Browne said he will make a decision on endorsing before the runoff.

Neilson, the brother of State Rep. Ed Neilson, a former Local 98 political director, was fired by Lynch earlier this year as a Local 98 business agent.

“More than 50% of our membership cast their ballot for a change and I believe that change begins at the top,” Neilson told Clout. “I would welcome any opportunity to debate Mr. Lynch in the upcoming weeks so the members can decide who is best prepared to address the issues facing our union.”

Dougherty, who backed Lynch after being convicted on federal bribery charges, fell out with him during a dispute with Local 98′s insurance carrier about paying his legal bills. Dougherty still faces two more trials, including one where he and other Local 98 officials are accused of embezzling $600,000 from the union.

The election winner takes control of a union with seriously deep pockets, including a political action committee that had $13.8 million in the bank on May 1.

Lynch, in a statement, noted that he took more votes than Neilson. Now he needs to whip up voter turnout for the runoff.

“I’ve since received a ton of calls from members asking how they can help me win on June 24th,” Lynch said. “I’m currently working hard to convince those members who didn’t vote on Saturday to make sure they vote in the run-off election.”

“It’s a family decision. Last time we had a family vote. We have six daughters. And my wife, we had a family vote. It was 7-1 against, and I did it anyway. So we’re now in the middle of further negotiations.”

— Dave McCormick, asked this week by the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association if he will compete for the 2024 Republican nomination to challenge U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat. McCormick finished a close second in the 2022 Senate primary to Mehmet Oz.

Clout provides often irreverent news and analysis about people, power, and politics.