Some Republican leaders say GOP needs to embrace mail-in voting

Allegheny County’s GOP chairman and a North Hills Republican who came up short in his bid for Congress are placing at least some blame for the party’s poor midterm election performance on the party’s refusal to embrace mail-in voting.

Sam DeMarco, the county’s GOP chairman, said Republicans applied for less than 15% of the mail-in ballots requested in Allegheny County.

Instead, most Republican voters waited until Election Day to vote. Even for the most well-intentioned voters, DeMarco said, waiting to vote in person can be a riskier proposition. Sickness, work, family responsibilities or some unforeseen circumstance could easily throw a wrench in plans to get to the polls.

Democrats had a “tremendous advantage” by successfully encouraging voters to cast their ballots by mail in advance of Election Day, DeMarco said.

“Failure to use the voting options available is like trying to fight a fight with one arm tied behind your back,” he said.

DeMarco’s counterpart in Westmoreland County, Bill Bretz, agreed.

“For whatever the reason, we’re not taking full advantage of the process,” Bretz said. “We suppressed our (mail-in) votes. We need to get over the demonization of the process.”

Former President Donald Trump’s allegations that mail-in votes were fraudulent or improperly counted in 2020 have made some Republicans hesitant to vote by mail, DeMarco said.

DeMarco, who voted by mail this year and in 2020, said he plans to lead an initiative to provide Republican voters with more accurate information about how mail-in voting works and why they should consider doing it.

“Republicans need to understand it’s the rules that are in place today,” he said. “If you want to win and you want to be able to govern, you have to use the rules that are in place to be able to do so.”

Bretz said he was not in favor of the no-excuse mail-in ballots, but said he is realistic about it because, with Democrat Josh Shapiro as the governor for the next four years, it will not change.

Republican Jeremy Shaffer — who lost to Democrat Chris Deluzio in the 17th Congressional District race — said he felt his chances were “hurt” by the lack of emphasis his party placed on early voting options.

“If we’re going to win the election, we better encourage people to use mail-in ballots. We’re putting our team at a significant disadvantage by not using mail-in ballots,” he said.

“Republicans are entirely reliant on Election Day turnout,” Shaffer said. “That means if someone ends up being out of town, they end up getting sick, they just forget to vote — that’s a vote we lose.”

“It’s like we’re running a 100-yard dash and we’re letting the Democrats start at the 50-yard line, and we’re trying to catch up to them,” Shaffer said. “We’re giving them weeks to get all their votes in, and we’re relying on one day.”

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Shaffer, who lost his race by about 6 percentage points, collected 56% of the more than 260,000 votes cast in person on Election Day, according to unofficial results. The problem for Shaffer was that Deluzio collected nearly 80% of the 95,000 votes cast by mail, the tallies showed.

State data showed that more than 863,000 Democrats returned mail-in and absentee ballots, while fewer than 266,000 Republicans did so.

Bretz believes many of those mail-in ballots already were turned in by the time eventual U.S. Senate winner Lt. Gov. John Fetterman debated Republican Dr. Oz, where the lingering effects of Fetterman’s stroke were evident.

“It was assumed that increasing access to mail ballots would especially favor older people and this would be at least net neutral for Republicans,” said Lara Putnam, a history professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

People who work long shifts such as doctors and nurses also have gravitated to mail-in voting, she said.

When Pennsylvania expanded mail-in voting options, Putnam said, “There was no particular reason to think that having access to no-excuse, mail ballots would advantage Democratic candidates.”

Putnam pointed to Trump and his allies spreading false allegations about mail-in ballots being fraudulent as a major reason the system has now been so widely rejected by Republican voters.

“Republican voters in particular — and, in general, folks who are exposed to partisan right-wing media sources — were just pounded by claims that mail-in ballots were fraudulent,” Putnam said. “It’s not surprising that folks are suspicious and disinclined to use mail ballots.”

Joe DiSarro, a political science professor at Washington & Jefferson College, said he believes factors such as distrust in mail-in voting played only a small role in the Republican party’s problems on Election Day.

“Issues, candidates and campaigns are where an election is won or lost,” he said.

DiSarro argued that the GOP candidates simply didn’t launch strong enough campaigns to earn swing voters and independents this year.

He pointed to data from exit polls that showed voters ranked abortion rights high on their list of concerns. He said Republican candidates such as Doug Mastriano, who lost his bid for governor, sometimes took stances that were too divisive. Mastriano had said he would look to ban abortion and provide no exceptions for rape, incest or situations where the mother’s life was in jeopardy.

DiSarro said it was more likely issues like that hurt Republicans on Tuesday.

Still, he said, there’s “no doubt” the GOP is “a bit behind” the curve in embracing mail-in ballots.

“I’m not going to suggest the party couldn’t improve its chances at the ballot box by encouraging more people to cast mail-in ballots,” he said.