RNC to launch campaign pushing Republicans to vote early in 2024
Fox News
EXCLUSIVE: The Republican National Committee is launching a new campaign to focus on maximizing pre-Election Day voting to build on absentee returns and early in-person voting ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Fox News Digital has learned the RNC is rolling out a Bank Your Vote nationwide campaign, which is expected to “encourage, educate and activate Republican voters on when, where and how to lock in their votes as early as possible” through in-person early voting, absentee voting and ballot harvesting where legal.
“To beat Joe Biden and the Democrats in 2024, we must ensure that Republicans bank as many pre-Election Day votes as possible,” RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel told Fox News Digital.
“The RNC is proud to build on our historic efforts from last cycle and work with the entire Republican ecosystem to reach every state.”
McDaniel added that “banking votes early needs to be the focus of every single Republican campaign in the country, and the Republican National Committee will lead the charge.”
NRCC Chairman Richard Hudson appointed Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., and NRSC Chairman Steve Daines tapped Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., to co-chair the effort.
“I am proud to co-chair the RNC’s efforts to activate Republicans to ‘Bank Your Vote’ before Election Day,” Donalds told Fox News Digital.
“To take back the White House and Senate and strengthen our House majority in 2024, Republicans must play the game by today’s rules, which means maximizing our efforts to bank votes before Election Day,” Hagerty told Fox News Digital. “We cannot afford to sacrifice most of the opportunities to bank votes in key states while Democrats run up the score.”
Hagerty said encouraging Republicans to “securely ‘Bank Your Vote’ is the only way to protect the vote and reclaim our out-of-control government.”
NEARLY HALF OF ALL 2022 MIDTERM VOTERS CAST BALLOTS EARLY OR BY MAIL
The campaign comes as Republicans seek to build on early voting gains from the 2022 election cycle. Republicans, at a higher rate than in 2020, opted to cast their ballots before Election Day. Nevertheless, the GOP still lagged behind Democrats.
According to statistics compiled by the U.S. Election Project in November, 33.3% of early votes came from registered Republicans in states that report such information. That was up from 30.5% during the 2020 presidential election; whereas Democrats voted early at about the same rate — 40.6% in 2022 and 40.8% in 2020.
The Bank Your Vote campaign is set to build on the RNC’s Election Integrity operation, which has more than 80,000 team members to “protect” the vote.
“In the courts, we will continue to fight against bad ballot harvesting laws while also ensuring that it’s easy to vote and hard to cheat in American elections,” an RNC official said.
The RNC says a critical part of getting voters to become pre-Election Day voters will be “ensuring voter confidence in elections” through its “Protect Your Vote efforts.” The RNC is expected to have staff and lawyers on the ground training poll watchers to observe every step of the election process.
The campaign’s website, BankYourVote.com, is encouraging voters to pledge to “bank” their votes, which will activate digital reminders from the RNC about all applicable pre-Election Day voting options.
The campaign will have the RNC partner with state parties and campaigns to create pages outlining pre-Election Day voting processes for the 56 states and territories with links to state government sites where voters can request their ballots directly.
The RNC also plans to “aggressively target young voters on social media platforms and minority voters at our RNC Community Centers.” The community centers were created in an effort to promote minority engagement in Asian-Pacific American, Black and Hispanic communities in key states across the nation.
An RNC official told Fox News Digital that the RNC’s field operation made more than 300 million volunteer door knocks and phone calls during the 2020 and 2022 election cycles.