Former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Ronna McDaniel said that an increase in early voting must be the “norm going forward” for the Republican Party following President-elect Trump’s win in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
“It was so critical that President Trump, he spoke out on this. I mean, there’s no better person that’s going to get voters to change their habits, to believe in it than President Trump,” McDaniel said during her Wednesday appearance on NewsNation’s show “The Hill.”
“The RNC, I was there earlier this year,” she said. “We launched a ‘Bank Your Vote’ initiative in every state. We were going to county parties. We were creating ‘Bank Your Vote’ captains,” she added, referencing the program the committee launched in 2023 that encouraged GOP voters to cast their ballots early.
“This is certainly something that took an education, but it wouldn’t have happened without the top of the ticket saying it,” said McDaniel, who resigned in March from the RNC. “This has to be the norm going forward, we can’t expect to get everything on Election Day.”
Trump has had mixed feelings about early voting, previously condemning but changing his tune on the subject recently. In this year’s election, early voting records have been broken in some battleground states. More than 82 million people cast ballots early before Election Day came around.
McDaniel has tussled with her party over voting methods in 2022, signaling to the GOP to quit discouraging early voting and vote by mail.
“Our voters need to vote early,” McDaniel said in late 2022. “I have said this over and over again. There were many in 2020 saying, ‘Don’t vote by mail, don’t vote early.’ And we have to stop that and understand that if Democrats are getting ballots in for a month, we can’t expect to get it all done in one day.”
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