PITTSBURGH — Just over a month out from Election Day, Keystone State Republicans are closing the gap with Democrats when it comes to voting by mail — despite hurdles like an anti-Trump Airbnb host evicting ballot-chasers from their paid-for lodgings.
After years of skepticism from Donald Trump and Republican voters, the GOP is finally embracing the mail-in-ballot method in their efforts to flip Pennsylvania red and spending millions to borrow from the Democrats’ playbook to encourage its voters to mail in their ballots.
New data shared with The Post shows the effort is paying off.
While Pennsylvania Republicans are still requesting far fewer mail-in ballots than Democrats, they’re are cutting into the Dems’ mail-in advantage, which could prove critical in a state that went for President Biden by barely more than 80,000 votes in 2020.
Pennsylvania Chase, a grassroots project dedicated to chasing mail-in ballots to secure Trump the state’s 19 electoral votes, analyzed Department of State data to find that just 35 days out from Election Day, the state’s Republicans had requested roughly 373,000 mail-in ballots.
While that seems like peanuts next to the nearly 879,000 mail-in ballots Dems have requested, a comparison with previous cycles reveals the Democratic advantage has decreased.
At this point in the 2020 election, when the pandemic was raging and voting by mail nearly doubled, Pennsylvania Democrats requested almost 846,000 more ballots than Republicans. In the 2022 midterms, that advantage shrunk to about 546,000 requested mail-in ballots.
But Republicans have cut that Democratic lead down this cycle to roughly 506,000 requests.
“The momentum is with us,” Pennsylvania Chase founder Cliff Maloney told The Post of the group’s get-out-the-vote efforts.
Maloney has stationed 120 paid field organizers in 10 Airbnbs across the Commonwealth, with the goal of knocking on 500,000 doors by Nov. 5 to make sure those requested mail-in ballots are cast and counted.
“It’s not persuasion. It’s not policy,” Maloney said. “It’s just chase the ballots.”
It’s not as simple as it sounds. Maloney said a Philadelphia Airbnb host last week, for instance, immediately canceled the $5,000 reservation and evicted his seven tenants when they told him, “We chase ballots for Republicans in PA.”
“The guys are in the field extra hours today because they’re pissed off and motivated,” Maloney told The Post. His group is considering legal action for discrimination while Airbnb investigates the incident — and remains undeterred.
The former math teacher and Young Americans for Liberty president knows Republicans can’t compete with Democrats on raw mail-in votes, but they can increase the GOP’s share.
“If we can get it to 33%, we cannot lose statewide. And we end the mail-in-ballot domination by Democrats,” Maloney explained, though he said his models show Trump could win Pennsylvania with just 26% or 27% of the mail-in vote.
PA Chase’s data find that Republicans are inching towards these targets with 26.5% of mail-in ballots requested with a little over a month to go until Election Day. Republicans were at 23.1% at that point in 2020 and 18.3% in 2022.
“The gap is closing,” said Jondavid Longo, state director of Early Vote Action in Pennsylvania, a grassroots organization focused on registering Republican voters that also encourages mail-in and early voting.
“Republicans need to use every tool in their toolkit that Democrats have access to.”
“Democrats embraced no-excuse mail-in voting” in 2020, Maloney noted. While they had more than a month to mail in their votes, Republicans were limiting themselves to voting just one day.
Trump lost Pennsylvania by some 80,000 votes in 2020, but he lost the mail-in vote by 1.4 million.
That’s likely because Trump had cast doubt on mail-in votes before they were counted in the Keystone State.
In September 2020, 74% of Republican voters believed fraud was a problem with voting by mail, making them far less likely to use the method.
“They realized it was a huge mistake,” Mike Mikus, a Pittsburgh Democratic consultant, told The Post. “He’s done damage that will probably last a generation when it comes to mail-in voting among Republicans.”
But the Trump campaign is trying to combat their candidate’s past hostility.
Trump has encouraged his supporters to vote by whatever means necessary, including by mail.
In late August, the Trump campaign launched SwampTheVoteUSA.com so voters could directly request a mail-in ballot in Pennsylvania without being redirected elsewhere on the Internet.
Still, Trump repeated claims in September that “20% of the Mail-In ballots in Pennsylvania are fraudulent.”
“That’s bulls–t,” Sam DeMarco, Allegheny County councilman and GOP chair, told The Post
“If you believe fraud is occurring, then make it too big to rig,” said DeMarco, who’s advocated Republicans embrace mail-in voting for some time.
“Folks are starting to understand it’s better to take a chance on voting by mail than not vote at all,” Maloney said.
As ballots are mailed out to voters, PA Chase will turn from encouraging mail-in requests to knocking on Republican doors that requested mail-in ballots. From there it plans to get voters to commit to dropping them off at the post office or the county clerk or taking them to the polls Election Day.
“Democrats call it the power of annoying the voter,” Maloney joked. “It’s a tactic, and it works.”
And it’s the only way for those requested mail-in ballots to count.
Democratic voters in Pennsylvania were nearly three times more likely to return mail-in ballots as Republicans in 2020.
And some Republican skepticism remains.
“Republicans are upping their percentage of voting by mail,” DeMarco said, but he wasn’t sure how much chasing ballots would help Republicans in 2024.
“You don’t know if you are reaching the low-propensity voters or cannibalizing the folks who will vote on Election Day” when you knock at those doors, he explained.
Though Maloney is concerned mail-in voting can be tampered with and would like to see reforms, he said, “I’m not going to cede an election because I disagree with the rules.”
“In the meantime, we are going to fight fire with fire.”
