Florida & national GOP going all in on early voting, despite Trump’s comments to the contrary

The Republican National Committee (RNC) has launched  a “Bank Your Vote” campaign in Florida to encourage Republicans to vote early in next year’s general election — even as the party’s leading presidential candidate, Donald Trump, continues to disparage voting by mail.

Early voting and especially voting by mail have been a regular form of casting ballots in Florida for well more than a decade, among both Republicans and Democrats. But the concept was novel for many voters around the rest of the country when states began implementing it in 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic made people wary of leaving their homes to vote in person.

That led to criticism by Trump and other Republicans that there was something nefarious about early voting.

But the RNC announced in June that the party could no longer afford the luxury of relying on their voters to only cast ballots on Election Day, and national party chair Ronna McDaniel said that to beat Joe Biden in 2024, “We must ensure that Republicans bank as many pre-Election Day votes as possible.”