Marjorie Taylor Greene has been re-calibrating her career and re-directing alliances and policy stances this year. It started with her partnership with the more moderate Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy.
She has endured grievances from her former best friend Congresswoman Lauren Boebert and is reportedly “done” with the alt-Right, wolvish political predator Steve Bannon, who now wants Greene “primaried.”
Don’t Rock the Vote
Marjorie Taylor Greene has always been an absolutist when it comes to voting. She previously believed that in-person paper ballots were the only way to go and that poll workers should check IDs before voters can pull the lever. She focused much of her chagrin on mail-in votes that she thought were open to fraudulent counting by poll workers.
Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Migrating to a Different View
But now she has curiously shifted her thinking and supports mail-in voting.
She posted on Twitter on June 4 that “In order to overcome stolen elections, Republicans must increase voter turnout and vote by every means possible. Register more voters, harvest ballots, mail-in, vote early, and encourage voters to vote.”
2000 Mules
The right has accused the Democrats of illegally harvesting ballots as portrayed in the documentary from right-wing soothsayer Dinesh D’Souza in his documentary 2000 Mules. The film claimed that the left in 2020 used so-called paid “ballot mules” to “illegally collect and drop off ballots in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin,” according to the Associated Press.
As a result of this movie and other claims of voting fraud by Republicans, the GOP had a decision to make. Either join the ballot harvesting club and do it better than Democrats or continue to support in-person voting on election day. Greene has appeared to have chosen the former because of the need to beat President Joe Biden in 2024.
In my Midterm 2022 election post-mortem on the podcast Truth Caviar, I also said that Republicans needed to better compete with Democrats by using leftist tactics to get out the vote and collect as many ballots as possible if the GOP is to win in 2024. That means early voting, mail-ins, and ballot harvesting. Personally, I like the old, traditional ways of voting better though.
Other Conservatives Want New Voting Tactics to Mirror Liberals
Greene’s conclusions about the election tactics are notable but they are in line with what Conservative activists such as Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, recommend to challenge Democrats at the ballot box. This thinking can be summarized with the words, “They do it. So we should do it better,” despite Republican claims of ballot harvesting being illegal to begin with.
However, the lead election denier himself, Donald Trump, hates mail-in ballots. He blasted the practice on his Truth Social app after the election. “REMEMBER, YOU CAN NEVER HAVE FAIR & FREE ELECTIONS WITH MAIL-IN BALLOTS. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER. WON’T AND CAN’T HAPPEN!!!”
Would Trump, during voting in the primary or the general election if he is the Republican nominee, also shift his thinking on mail-ins and ballot harvesting? That remains to be seen. The Republican National Committee could change its tactics too at the grassroots level and pursue the practices that Greene and others are calling for despite what the former president wants.
RNC chief Ronna McDaniel called for an adjustment after the 2022 Midterms and that the GOP vitriol against early voting and voting by mail should stop if her party wants to beat the Democrats.
My wife and I mostly vote in-person on election day in generals and sometimes have voted early in primaries depending on our schedules. I would never vote by mail or give my ballot outside a polling location to someone else to process. I’m just a traditionalist and yep, I admit it, I’m scared of fraud.
But the Democrats love to vote early, vote by mail, and harvest ballots and they were mostly successful in 2022. It may take a shift in thinking on the Republican side to keep up with election trends in the 2020s. Voting early, voting by mail, and harvesting ballots is likely here to stay and will be a significant decider in 2024 for both parties.
Author Expertise and Experience: Serving as 19FortyFive’s Defense and National Security Editor, Dr. Brent M. Eastwood is the author of Humans, Machines, and Data: Future Trends in Warfare. He is an Emerging Threats expert and former U.S. Army Infantry officer. You can follow him on Twitter @BMEastwood. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and Foreign Policy/ International Relations.
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