Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel announced a nationwide campaign focused on maximizing pre-Election Day voter turnout.
The goal is to lock in as many votes as early as possible through a reeducation campaign called “Bank Your Vote.”
The initiative will also encourage and activate Republican voters on when, where, and how to “bank” their votes as early as possible in the election season, through in-person early voting, absentee voting, and wherever ballot harvesting is legal, McDaniel told reporters on a Tuesday call.
“Moving towards the 2024 election, the RNC will 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 ballot directly,” the committee’s press release stated.
The initiative is a collaborative effort between the RNC, National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), and National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).
To lead the effort, NRCC Chairman Richard Hudson appointed Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) to cochair the effort, and NRSC Chairman Steve Daines (R-MT) appointed Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN).
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“If we learned one thing in the last election cycle in 2022, we need to turn election day into election month,” Daines told reporters. “The democrats out raised us financially in past cycles, but they’ve also dominated early in mail-in voting. And we can’t let that keep happening and take our chances on election day.”
“So, we are going to be encouraging our voters to ‘bank’ their votes early. That will give us a competitive edge,” he continued. “Republicans need to be taking advantage of all voting methods in each state, just like Democrats have done.”
According to the RNC, Bank Your Vote will specifically focus on four key strategies:
Digital and Data
- RNC Data will work in tandem with RNC Digital to strategically target voters who are most likely to vote before Election Day.
- Combining a multi-channel digital approach along with the RNC’s data-driven ground game, we will target voters for the highest return on investment.
Ground Game
- The RNC’s field operation has made over 300 million volunteer door knocks and phone calls in the last two election cycles.
- With a nationwide network of trained volunteers, we will activate neighbor-to-neighbor contact to inform and mobilize Republicans.
Protect Your Vote
- Maximizing and expanding the number of early in-person voting locations.
- The RNC’s Election Integrity operation has over 80,000 team members to protect your 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.
Strategic Messaging
- The RNC, working with the other national committees, will conduct focus groups and message testing on how best to communicate with Republican voters on pre-Election Day voting, equipping Republican leadership and candidates to deliver a unified message nationwide.
- Maximizing opportunities in addition to traditional media, we will aggressively target young voters on social media platforms and minority voters at our RNC Community Centers.
The new plan comes after Republicans appeared to lose many elections in 2022 due to voting methods that Republicans refused to fully utilize. Democrats, however, were unafraid to vote early, trust mail-in-voting, and use the tactic of ballot harvesting in some locations to overwhelm Republican candidates.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.