CLIFF MALONEY: “No more excuses, we’ll raise the money, we’ll knock the doors, we’ll chase the ballots.”
Jose Nino
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With mail-in-voting becoming the norm in the United States thanks to Democrat Party efforts to allow for no-excuse mail-in voting, Republicans have now been compelled to fight fire with fire.
Democrat operatives are making constant contact with mail-in voters to guarantee that their ballot is logged into the system in a process called “ballot chasing.” Thus far, Democrats hold a major advantage over Republicans when it comes to voting before Election Day.
For example, in 2022, Republicans only acquired 33.8% of early votes. These percentage figures plummet even further when mail-in ballots are broken down.
28 states and Washington D.C. allow for citizens to absentee vote without an excuse. Republicans still haven’t adjusted to this new electoral reality and have paid the price for it at the polls.
However, Cliff Maloney, CEO of Citizens Alliance, and his army of grassroots activists are committed to changing this dynamic after rolling out a ballot chase program in Pennsylvania — The Pennsylvania Chase— back in December.
“Ballot chasing as it’s referred to today is actually vote by mail chasing,” Maloney told R.C. Maxwell of RedState. “It’s separate from traditional GOTV efforts because here you create a targeting universe of likely low tendency, mail-in voters and some registered independents and reach them with your message in a variety of ways before finally confirming they’ve sent their mail-in vote,” he continued.
Ballot chasing requires activists to know who the permanent mail-in voters, independents, and low-propensity voters are and how to reach out to them.
As mentioned before, Republicans have dropped the ball on mail-in voting. In 2020, Republicans were filing lawsuits left and right to stop mail-in voting and encouraging voters to completely avoid absentee voters. By contrast, Democrat Super PAC Priorities USA dropped $24 million to organize a national mail-in vote initiative.
That said, the tide is slowly changing in grassroots conservative circles. Turning Point Action announced a program such as Chase The Vote to ballot chase in critical swing states such as Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin.
In effect, Maloney’s Pennsylvania Chase get-out-the-vote program has lately been adopted by Turning Point Action.
Turning Point Action has forged ballot chase alliances with smaller organizations in 10 swing states. It’s still up in the air if TPUSA or similar organizations will receive support from the Republican National Committee, which has largely been viewed as falling behind on the issue.
“Pennsylvania isn’t waiting around for Ronna [Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee],” Maloney stated. “No more excuses, we’ll raise the money, we’ll knock the doors, we’ll chase the ballots.”
Republicans should take note here. Sticking to their old ways is only guaranteeing their political irrelevance in the long-term. Hopefully, GOP leadership starts studying Maloney’s program and replicating it across the nation.
If they don’t, the Republican Party should expect more disappointment at the polls.
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