Pennsylvania Republicans Lag Democrats in Early Mail Ballot Requests

In the past two election cycles, Republicans have been far less eager to vote by mail than Democrats — and their candidates have suffered because of it. This year, Republicans made Pennsylvania their target for flipping the trend, pledging more than $10 million to persuade G.O.P. voters there to vote by mail in the November election.

Early data from the secretary of state’s office shows that they still have a long way to go.

As of Monday, Democrats in the state had requested about 881,000 mail ballots, and Republicans had requested 373,000, less than half of the Democratic total and only about a quarter of the total mail ballots requested in the state.

While it is still early (the last day to request a mail ballot is Oct. 29), such a large gap shows it is extremely unlikely that Republicans will come close to parity with Democrats in voting by mail in Pennsylvania. It is stark evidence that former President Donald J. Trump’s longstanding criticism of mail-in voting — including misinformation that it is rife with fraud — has had a stubborn and lasting impact.

Political parties and campaigns have seen the benefit of getting their voters to cast mail ballots, and cast them early. It shrinks the universe of voters necessary to turn out for Election Day and removes any unpredictability that could come in just a single day of voting, from weather to long lines.

Take, for example, the Nevada race for Senate in 2022. Washoe County, home to Reno and the second largest population center in the swing state, was battered by snow, rain and wind on Election Day. Though Nevada mostly votes by mail, plenty of Republicans had vowed to vote in person, taking a lead from Mr. Trump. It is impossible to know who was prevented from voting, but Democrats were able to feel comfortable that more of their voters had already cast a ballot while Republicans scrambled.

Adam Laxalt, the Republican candidate, lost by about 8,000 votes.

Republican leaders behind the effort in Pennsylvania are making the pitch that voters never know what might happen on Election Day. They could get sick. A storm could come through. Much better, they argue, to bank their votes early. For Trump campaign organizers, early voting also allows them to check off core Republican supporters so they can focus on voters less likely to cast ballots with a late get-out-the-vote push.

In Pennsylvania’s bellwether county of Erie, overlapping efforts by the Trump-Vance campaign, the county Republican Party and an ad hoc pro-Trump activist team are pushing Trump supporters to vote early, either by mail or in drop-boxes that four years ago were wrongly called the epicenter of fraud.

The motto “too big to rig” is everywhere in the county, a hint that if Republicans just swamp the early vote, Democrats won’t be able to “steal” the election, a reference to the common falsehood spouted by Mr. Trump and others that the only way Democrats win is to cheat.

But those same organizers laid the seeds for the resistance they are finding.

“Republicans, let’s face it, they’re lazy; they just want to vote at the polls on Election Day,” said Kimberly Hunter, 56, an activist in Erie, Pa., who is trying to sell Republicans on early voting on Saturday at Dobbins Landing, overlooking Presque Isle Bay. She made the pitch that drop boxes were a viable alternative to those leery of relying on the U.S. Postal Service, but she acknowledged she wasn’t getting a lot of takers.

Mr. Trump now sends mixed messages on mail-in voting. At a rally this weekend in Erie, he was flanked by two large signs that both read “VOTE EARLY!” But sometimes he still calls for single-day voting.

The Republican legal strategy in Pennsylvania is also not sending the warmest signals about voting by mail: The party is currently suing to prohibit voters from fixing errors in their mail ballots before Election Day. And a separate lawsuit blocked mail ballots with small errors on the outer envelope from being counted.

Democrats, however, have been pushing their voters to get their mail ballots in early, while also spotlighting Mr. Trump’s comments and the Republican legislative strategy.

“While Republicans try to tip the scales by asking courts to disenfranchise tens of thousands of eligible voters,” said Charles Lutvak, a spokesman for the Harris campaign, “we are on the ground across the state.”

The Republicans who helmed some of the push for mail-in voting in Pennsylvania, however, see signs of progress. They note that their rate of request is higher than previous cycles, and that the program is part of a long-term approach to restore trust in voting by mail, aimed especially at infrequent voters.

By encouraging tools like mail-in and absentee voting, Republicans could “cover the spread of the margin we lost by in 2020,” said Jessica Anderson, the president of the Sentinel Action Fund, a conservative political organization with ties to the Heritage Foundation that has been one of the groups focused on mail voting in Pennsylvania. (Sentinel Action Fund became a legally separate entity from the Heritage infrastructure last year.)

Max Docksey, the political director of the Republican State Leadership Committee, said in a statement that Republicans are “on pace to bank more votes than we did in 2022” in Pennsylvania, and that the small improvements could prove crucial in down-ballot races. “This increase could very well make the difference in a state where control of the legislature will be decided by a razor-thin margin and every vote counts.”

Of course, early returns are not an indicator of turnout, and certainly not of results. And mail ballot requests in Pennsylvania are not indicative of how many voters will actually vote by mail. In 2022, about 82 percent of voters in Pennsylvania returned their mail ballot. In 2020, the return rate was about 85 percent.

In Pennsylvania, voters were able to begin requesting absentee ballots in early June. But Republicans pressing the issue readily admit it is not going well. “Republicans like to vote in person,” said Judy Custer, 66, of Harborcreek, Pa., who was trying to get Republicans lining up for Mr. Trump’s rally in Erie to request mail-in ballots. “They think there is a lot of cheating going on that way.”

Shane Goldmacher contributed reporting from Erie, Pa.