Former President Donald Trump, the leading GOP candidate in 2024, is formally backing the Republican National Committee (RNC) “Bank Your Vote” initiative to push to get as many Republicans nationwide to vote early in 2024, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.
“Radical Democrats have abused and taken advantage of absentee and early voting laws to build a big lead over Republicans before election day,” Trump says in a new video recorded for the RNC and provided to Breitbart News exclusively. “While Republicans have worked to share our beautiful values with voters, Democrats and dangerous groups funded by the far left have simply focused on collecting ballots. That’s all they wanted to do—collecting ballots. But you know what? It turned out to be not such a bad idea. This must change for us to win in 2024. We may not like the current system, but we need to master the rules and beat the Democrats at their own game, and then we can make our own rules. Republicans must get tougher and fight harder to cast our votes and get our ballots turned in earlier so Democrats can’t rig the polls against us on election day. We cannot let that happen. They rigged the election in 2020—we cannot let that happen in 2024.”
Trump continues in the video by specifically praising the RNC’s new program. The RNC program encourages Republicans to engage in early voting in-person, absentee and mail voting, and ballot harvesting where legal. The fact that Trump is backing these efforts is a very big development for the party, especially given his history of ripping election issues.
“The RNC is leading the fight to help secure your vote in 2024 as well,” Trump says. “They’re fighting bad Democrat laws, putting folks on the ground to serve as poll workers and poll watchers, and engaging attorneys to monitor every step of the process. Go to BankYourVote.com to sign up and commit to voting early… We must defeat the far left at their own game or our country will never recover from this disastrous, crooked Biden administration.”
WATCH: TRUMP BACKS GOP’S ‘BANK YOUR VOTE’ PUSH:
Trump’s push for Republican voters to embrace the rules of elections as they are now—while pushing for changes later—echoes something he told Breitbart News late last year, right after he announced his 2024 candidacy.
“The best thing would be same-day voting, paper ballots, voter ID, et cetera,” Trump said in December 2022 in Miami in an interview with Breitbart News, reiterating his belief that changes are needed to the system. However, he said, until Republicans regain power and can change the voting laws, they have to fight like Democrats do under the current rules.
“For the time, though, we have to live with the system that stinks, so we have to fight it like they do,” Trump told Breitbart News then.
The RNC announced the “Bank Your Vote” initiative back in early June, with chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and other top party leaders endorsing the effort.
“To beat Joe Biden and the Democrats in 2024, we must ensure that Republicans bank as many pre-Election Day votes as possible,” McDaniel said in a statement then. “The RNC is proud to build on our historic efforts from last cycle and work with the entire Republican ecosystem to reach every state. Banking votes early needs to be the focus of every single Republican campaign in the country, and the Republican National Committee will lead the charge.”
In conjunction with the RNC, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) have also joined the push to bank votes ahead of the election. NRCC chairman Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC) appointed Trump-backer Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) to lead the effort for the NRCC and NRSC chairman Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT)—who also backs Trump—appointed fellow Trump-backer Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) to lead the senate-side push.
“I am proud to co-chair the RNC’s efforts to activate Republicans to ‘Bank Your Vote’ before Election Day,” Donalds said then. “With innovative technology to educate voters and safeguards in place to secure the process, Republicans are prepared to win up-and-down the ballot in 2024.”
“To take back the White House and Senate and strengthen our House majority in 2024, Republicans must play the game by today’s rules, which means maximizing our efforts to bank votes before Election Day,” Hagerty added. “We cannot afford to sacrifice most of the opportunities to bank votes in key states while Democrats run up the score. Encouraging Republicans to securely ‘Bank Your Vote’ is the only way to protect the vote and reclaim our out-of-control government. I’m pleased to work with leaders across the Republican Party, from the Senate to the House, our Governors, and the RNC on this important effort to deliver victories nationwide next November.”
Per the RNC, the comprehensive vote-banking effort that Trump now formally supports will comprise multiple fronts from digital and data to ground game to strategic messaging. The RNC’s data team will work with its digital team to identify voters likely to vote early, and use digital efforts to communicate with those voters. The party’s field operations, which have led efforts to knock on hundreds of millions of doors in the past couple election cycles, along with a nationwide group of volunteers, activists, and staff—the RNC’s election integrity team has 80,000 members nationwide—will, per the Party, make direct contacts with these people to ensure as many votes as possible are banked early.
