The Republican National Convention (RNC) is slamming the Biden campaign after it demanded the RNC drop mail-in ballot election integrity lawsuits in light of the RNC’s new messaging, noting that the criticisms are nonsense and asserting that Democrats are “laser-focused on dismantling election integrity safeguards.”
The Biden-Harris campaign formally called on the Trump campaign and RNC to drop “attacks” on mail-in ballots, attempting to frame Trump and the GOP as being hypocritical by now urging Republicans to do whatever they have to do to have their vote counted, even if that means voting early or mailing in a ballot.
“If Donald Trump is serious about finally recognizing that mail voting is a great option for voters to utilize this November, he should demand the RNC and his MAGA allies drop every one of these lawsuits throughout the country,” Biden-Harris 2024 campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement.
However, the RNC is pushing back, pointing out that its election integrity lawsuits are legitimate and zoned in on specific issues — counting ballots received four days after Election Day or without postmarks.
For example, the RNC, Trump Campaign, and Nevada GOP filed a lawsuit challenging Nevada’s counting of mail ballots received after Election Day that did not have a postmark, contending that Nevada law requires mail-in ballots to be postmarked on or before Election Day. Under current Nevada law, mail-in ballots received up to four days after Election Day can be counted if they are postmarked on or before Election Day. The ballot can also be counted up to three days after Election Day if the date of the postmark “cannot be determined,” according to the GOP press release.
“Yet we have discovered that Nevada election officials routinely count non-postmarked mail ballots received after Election Day, in violation of the law,” the RNC revealed in a June 3 press release.
Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald said, “Allowing ballots without postmarks to be illegally counted undermines” election integrity and voter confidence.
RNC Chairman Michael Whatley also called out Nevada’s practice, contending that the state’s ballot receipt deadline “clearly violates federal law and undermines election integrity in the state.”
“Ballots received days after Election Day should not be counted — the RNC and our partners are suing to secure an honest election, support Nevada voters, and oppose unlawful schemes,” he said.
RNC Election Integrity Communications’ Claire Zunk told Breitbart News exclusively, “Rather than fixing the disasters Biden has created, Democrats are laser-focused on dismantling election integrity safeguards.”
“President Trump has been very clear that Republicans should vote in the legal way that works best for them, and also very clear that we must secure the election to ensure these votes are counted properly,” Zunk continued.
“These are simple concepts, but Democrats would prefer a chaotic system that is open to fraud,” she added.
Indeed, these lawsuits do not undermine the revamped messaging of the GOP, which RNC co-chair Lara Trump discussed with Breitbart News during an appearance at Turning Point USA’s Young Women’s Leadership Summit (YWLS) in San Antonio, Texas, in June.
She said election integrity is the top priority of the RNC at this point.
WATCH: “We Cannot Leave This to Chance” — RNC Co-Chair Lara Trump Tells Republicans to Vote Early
Jack Knudsen / Breitbart News“If you come to the RNC, the bulk of the people actually working in that building right now are on our election integrity team, and we have a huge push across the country. We’re going to have 100,000 volunteers for this election cycle, protectthevote.com, if anyone wants to come volunteer with us, and we were putting so many resources in that because we can never repeat 2020 in that election ever again. If we don’t have free, fair and transparent elections, quite frankly, nothing else really matters that we’re doing in this country. And so we really are doing things much differently,” she said, noting that the RNC is changing its messaging and also looking at “legal ballot harvesting, which has never been done before.”
“We also want to encourage people. Our messaging is a little different on voting in the past. We know that traditionally, Republicans like to vote on election day. What we are asking this election cycle is for people to vote early,” she said, pressing that GOP voters “cannot leave this to chance.”
“Life happens. If you wait until election day, you never know. And so we want to make sure that people are hearing that message loud and clear,” she said, acknowledging that many Republicans are “naturally reluctant” to the new messaging, because it goes against what they have heard for years. But Trump made it clear the RNC doing everything it can to ensure election integrity so Republicans feel comfortable voting early, which is likely where these specific lawsuits come into play.
“I understand why people feel that way. Look, what happened in 2020 with a lot of the mail in voting was awful, but we are working really hard right now to ensure that voter rolls are cleaned up across this country, that states that just mail out ballots are not sending them out to people who no longer live in those locations. We really are doing everything we possibly can to ensure that people feel comfortable doing that,” she added.
