RNC chief on criticism of early voting: ‘We need to stop that’

Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel on Tuesday urged members of her party to stop discouraging early voting and vote by mail.

“Our voters need to vote early,” McDaniel told Fox News. “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.”

Former President Trump was among the leading voices that questioned the security and validity of early and mail voting in 2020, baselessly claiming they allowed for fraud and rigged the election against him.

An RNC spokesperson later sought to clarify that the chairwoman was not speaking about the former president in her comments to Fox News.

“The discussion was about Democrats having a month to bank votes while Republicans expect to get it done in one day,” RNC spokesperson Nathan Brand told NBC News. “We were not talking about the former president, who has encouraged his base to vote early and has himself voted by mail.”

However, the former president has continued to rail against early and mail voting. When Trump launched his third bid for the presidency last month, he called for “same-day voting” and a ban on early voting.

McDaniel’s comments came as voters in Georgia headed to the polls on Tuesday in the state’s Senate runoff election, where Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) defeated his Trump-backed Republican challenger, Herschel Walker.