Hannity: Republican resistance to early voting ‘has to stop’

Fox News anchor Sean Hannity called on Republicans on Tuesday to stop their resistance to early and mail-in voting and, instead, embrace Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R) push to get voters to cast their ballots early.

“Before Glenn Youngkin won that race two years ago, I thought Virginia was gone. I never thought it was even on the map for Republicans. I didn’t think it’d be worth investing a penny in Virginia. But he proved a lot of us wrong,” Hannity said in a panel discussion on a disappointing election night for Republicans.

“And he certainly put a couple of things on the map here regardless of what the outcome is going to end up being — and that is that Republicans and their reluctance and resistance, Kayleigh, to voting early, voting by mail, has to stop,” Hannity said, addressing fellow panelist Kayleigh McEnany. 

Youngkin is up for reelection this cycle and, ahead of election day Tuesday, he took what some Republicans saw as a novel approach by encouraging GOP voters to cast their ballots early. 

Former President Trump famously pushed back against early or mail-in voting measures, especially during the pandemic.

Hannity gave Youngkin credit for pushing for early voting this cycle, and he took the suggestion a step further, calling on Republican to adopt “legal ballot harvesting” measures.  

“The second part of it has to be is Democrats have mastered — in states that have what’s called ‘legal ballot harvesting’ — they have mastered strategies. Republicans aren’t even in the legal ballot harvesting game. And I have not seen any effort movement at all to get in that game, and I think they’re making a huge mistake if they don’t.” 

“In those states without legal ballot harvesting, that’s got to be adopted by the Republicans, and they must equal the efforts of the Democrats or surpass them,” Hannity said. 

The National Conference of State Legislatures says dropping off ballots on behalf of someone else is legal in 32 states. Specific laws in states vary, with some requiring “ballot collection” to be limited to family members or caregivers and others restricting the number of ballots a person can drop off, according to a Reuters fact-check on claims of “ballot harvesting.”