Across Phoenix's sprawling campus, leaders of the influential conservative group Turning Point Action are addressing an issue they see as a deadly threat to the Republican Party: They had a plan to address the avoidance of early voting.
The group's leaders and many Republicans worry that Democrats are gaining a huge strategic advantage by enticing voters to vote early while Republican voters wait until Election Day. This phenomenon is due in large part to former President Donald J. Trump's persistent lies about voting by mail (sometimes amplified by Turning Point Action officials) and the deep skepticism that voting by mail has generated among conservative voters. It is caused by
An urgent search for solutions is currently underway, with tipping point actions at the forefront.
The group, which began as an insurgent organization for young Republicans and has become a powerful player in right-wing politics, has amassed $108 million in “Chase the Vote” programs with hundreds of staffers in Arizona and Wisconsin. The goal is to raise and spend more than US dollars. They follow a few simple steps. Identify Republican-leaning voters who did not vote in the past two elections. Build a personal connection with them over the next seven months. And, in the group's words, “Let's go after the ballots.”
Political diplomacy will be needed.
“Each of you will receive an assignment in the hundreds,” Tyler Bowyer, the group's chief operating officer, told about 20 trainees last week. “Do you think wearing a MAGA hat will attract his 50 percent of those people?”
The Chase the Vote program is one of the rights' largest and most expensive efforts to persuade Republicans to vote early. The widespread abandonment of practices that were prevalent in both parties before 2020 leaves Republican candidates more at the mercy of Election Day issues such as bad weather, long lines and voting machine failures. It means.
At the same time, Turning Point Action's program remains bound by deeply conservative views on early voting and voting by mail. Officials with the group have quickly expressed skepticism about the safety of such practices and called for tougher election laws, even though there is no evidence of widespread fraud.
Bowyer has publicly stated that his group is not trying to convert current Election Day voters to early voters. The main focus, he said, is to show low-propensity voters — people who didn't vote in recent elections — all the ways they can vote.
Charlie Kirk, founder of the Turning Point empire, said in an interview: “It's better to participate, even if it's through early voting, than not to participate at all. That's what we're saying.”
Party-wide distrust stirred by President Trump
But it will be difficult to improve Republican early voting rates. Trump and his allies continue to claim that mail-in voting is rife with fraud.
At a Fox News town hall event last month, Trump told host Laura Ingraham, “If you vote by mail, you automatically have fraud.” At a rally in Wisconsin this week, he promised to “secure” the election with “one-day voting.”
The damage to the Republican Party during the Trump administration is clear.
In the 2020 election, when many Americans voted by mail due to the pandemic, 7 million more Democrats than Republicans voted early in the 20 states that track party data, according to the U.S. Elections Project. Ta. According to the project, Democrats voted 2 million more people early than Republicans in 24 states in the 2022 midterm elections, and that advantage was built almost entirely on mail-in voting. Each time, Republican candidates lost by narrow margins in key races.
According to a February Pew Research Center survey, only 28% of Republicans support allowing voters to vote by mail if they choose, compared to 84% of Democrats.
In light of this trend, the Republican National Committee launched a “Bank Your Vote” program this year to encourage early voting. Lara Trump, the committee's new co-chair and Trump's daughter-in-law, said in an interview with NBC News last month: “We have to start encouraging things like early voting and mail-in credit to Republican voters. ” he said. Voting in progress. ”
Still, Trump has put the party in a difficult position. The new RNC leadership, handpicked by Mr. Trump and his allies, initially signaled that they would abandon Bank Your Vote before reversing course. Turning Point executives continue to criticize mail-in voting even as they lead a new “Chase the Vote” effort.
“Threading the needle for us, the games we have to play, and the things we have to understand: many who are deeply concerned about these processes that are being altered and manipulated. How do we get people to participate in the same process?'' Bowyer said in an interview that he was against the unproven conservative theory that Democrats are intentionally changing election rules to benefit themselves. mentioned darkly. (Bowyer was one of Arizona's fake electors in the 2020 election, and the Washington Post reports that the state's attorney general is currently investigating the scheme.)
Overcoming the disadvantages of the Republican Party and “searching the soul''
On Election Day 2022, Kirk realized things needed to change.
Kirk said when he entered the Phoenix church polling place to proudly vote for Kari Lake and other Republicans, he encountered a two-and-a-half hour line, mostly due to machine malfunctions. Other polling places in the area had similar problems.
Lake ultimately lost the gubernatorial race to Democrat Katie Hobbs by about 17,000 votes. About 19,000 more Democrats voted by mail than Republicans.
“That started a lot of soul searching among our team,” Kirk said in an interview. “I asked questions and said, 'What could I have done better?'
“We could have done better during the voting month,” he added, referring to the weeks-long early voting period.
This comes from Kirk, who wrote an essay on Fox News in July 2020 calling mail-in voting a power grab for Democrats, and who has repeatedly questioned the security of mail-in voting in social media posts before and after the 2020 election. appears to be a significant public reversal.
Kirk supported these sentiments in an interview. “There's understandable skepticism about filling out those precious ballots and putting them in the mail,” he said, adding that conservatives are not fans of the Postal Service.
Still, Kirk says Republicans should recognize that they have “a wealth of voting options.”
In a memo sent to donors last year, Turning Point Action said it wanted to hire more than 500 full-time “ballot trackers” in Arizona and 350 in Wisconsin. If the group raises its overall goal of $108 million — officials said it has raised “tens of millions of dollars,” but still has a ways to go — it will be able to help Georgia and possibly Michigan. There are plans to expand to other states.
A mission to change Republican voting habits
Powering Turning Point's efforts is a vast data operation led by Matthew Martinez, Chase the Vote's data director and former field director for Lake's campaign.
Martinez sets up shop in one of Turning Point's cavernous rooms at its Phoenix headquarters, with a 4-foot-by-6-foot whiteboard bearing maps of states, counties and cities dotted with handwritten numbers. placed. He methodically divided Arizona and Wisconsin by hand, dividing his precincts, precincts, and precincts, and identifying his 400 to 600 voters with low Republican leanings in each district.
Martinez argues that the voters who can turn these states red are not in traditional battleground districts, but in safe red districts, like Rep. Paul Gosar's district in Arizona.
“The current thinking for the last four years or more is flip, flip, flip,” Martinez said in an interview, noting the party's focus on competitive areas. “What I'm saying is we need to get rid of the base.”
The group also plans to use its Chase the Vote infrastructure for what it calls its election integrity efforts. “If you had people on the ground who were aware of their voting habits,” Bowyer said on a recent podcast, “Turning Point,” “it would be a lot easier to clean the voter rolls.”
Chase the Vote is still in its early stages and has only trained 20 ballot trackers so far. And while the new hires will face distrustful voters, Turning Point executives also face skeptical donors. They're more willing to write a big check and see immediate profits in the form of flashy advertising than to fund the grunt work of new employees. Untested field operations.
While the trainees took a break for a lunch catered by In-N-Out Burger, Kirk met with four major donors across the hall.
“When you can keep trying to flood the precincts on Election Day and keep expecting to win, but you’re losing by a narrow margin, it’s like challenging your muscle memory,” he said. said in an interview. “So if you're up close and you want to get the win, and there's a big period of 30 to 40 days where your opponent is ahead and you can't even play, that makes sense.” That 30 to 40 day window makes sense. Do something internally to achieve decisive results and strive for success. ”
Kirk said he plans to vote early in person this fall and plans to videotape it.
“We need to be Ned Flanders.”
Connecting with these low-propensity voters is part of what political operatives call “relational organizing,” a modern political term that refers to personal, rather than mass messaging like advertising. It means leveraging one-on-one connections.
During the training, Mr. Bowyer repeatedly displayed images of Ned Flanders, the merciless, good-natured character from The Simpsons who greets his neighbors with “heidi dilly ho.”
“We need to be Ned Flanders,” he said.
Bowyer has emphasized the importance of coming across as “human,” not necessarily an easy task in a movement fueled by President Trump's discontent.
On his recent podcast, Turning Point, he urged listeners to “not be mean and angry and aggressive and tell people they're stupid.”
Furthermore, he added: “Look, if we approached people and said, 'Oh, you're on the early voting list, right? You're such an idiot.' Do you think they're more motivated to vote? Do you think there's an increased willingness to become a voter? And that's effectively what's happening right now.”