Some Pennsylvania Republicans say it's time for the party to reevaluate mail-in voting following midterms that produced disappointing results.
While Democrats embraced mail-in voting, Pennsylvania GOP officials spent the past two years criticizing mail voting, and initiating lawsuits and bills aimed at adversely affecting the balloting method that has increased in popularity following the COVID pandemic.
"There's no question in my mind that Republicans have to have a different mail-in strategy," said Andy Reilly, a Republican National Committee member in Pennsylvania, Politico reported.
"When one party votes for 30 days and one party votes for one, you're definitely going to lose."
Former Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Pa., who unsuccessfully ran for governor in the Republican primary this year, agreed with Reilly.
"Republicans focus on Election Day turnout and Democrats started a month ahead of time," Barletta said, Politico reported. "If we want to win, if Republicans want to win, they got to get better at" mail voting.
Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa., told Newsmax last week that Republicans need to perfect ballot harvesting where it's legal while simultaneously pushing to stop its spread.
"We need to start telling people it's OK to vote by mail, but drop it off at the local place," Reschenthaler said on "Rob Schmitt Tonight."
"You don't know what's going to happen. You don't know if you're going to get sick. You don't know if you're going to have to go out of town on an emergency."
Pennsylvania Republicans are joining party members such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley who have said the GOP can't ignore the advantages of mail-in voting. Both DeSantis and Haley are considered potential contenders for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Former President Donald Trump and many of his strongest supporters cited mail-in voting as contributing to alleged voter fraud in the 2020 election. That greatly contributed to GOP members questioning the mail-in process.
Pennsylvania Republicans attacked Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf and the state's top election official for the way they implemented a 2019 voting law — that was backed by many GOP members — legalizing no-excuse mail voting.
Republicans slammed court rulings that enabled the use of drop boxes and allowed mail-in ballots to be received up to three days after the 2020 election as long as they were postmarked by Election Day.
Although many Pennsylvania Republicans likely will continue to propose repealing the state's vote-by-mail law, they know a law is unlikely with Democrat Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro set to take office next year.
"Republican and conservative activists need to embrace mail-in voting, as it isn't going away any time soon," Republican state Rep. Russ Diamond wrote in a postmortem on his website, Politico reported.
"Our goal isn't to convince regular voters to vote by mail, but to figure out how to cultivate mail-in votes from those registered Republicans who vote infrequently or don't vote at all."
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