CPAC chairman: GOP needs to adapt to voting changes, start ballot harvesting where legal

Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Chairman Matt Schlapp says that in order to catch up with Democrats, Republicans must adapt to major change in election rules and start ballot harvesting in states where it is legal. 

"It's very important that we not make someone feel bad for voting earlier or voting by mail," Schlapp said on "Just the News, No Noise" Wednesday. "These are fine things, we just have to do it with security. So in states with ballot harvesting, we ought to start ballot harvesting."

Mail-in voting and early voting have historically been a weakness for the GOP, with Republican voters predominantly opting to vote in person on Election Day. 

Schlapp emphasized the importance of beating Democrats at their own game in specific states where ballot harvesting is legal and early voting is more common. 

"There's five or six vote by mail states," said Schlapp. "We haven't statistically done well in those states. We have to beat them at their own game. The other thing we have to do, I think, is really invest in technology."

A state where Republicans really got a hold of early voting during the 2022 midterms was North Carolina. The state GOP Chairman Michael Whatley told "Just the News, No Noise" in an interview last year that early voting was the ticket to conservative victories in North Carolina.

"We put in place an early vote program because we have 17 days of early voting in North Carolina," Whatley said. "In the 2020 election cycle — that was the first time in the history of the state that Republicans actually won with early voting. And we did very well during the early voting this cycle around as well.

"Republicans are always gonna have a great day on Election Day. But if you are so far behind because of early voting and absentee voting that you can't dig yourself out of that hole, it really is going to make a big difference. So we've got to be able to compete."

Schlapp also urged Republicans to stop apologizing for a purported lack of diversity and instead go on offense against Democrats, proudly contrasting the party's historical leadership in abolishing slavery and securing civil rights and racial equality with the Democrats' history of support for slavery and Jim Crow laws enforcing racial separation. 

"The Republican Party has to stop being lectured on gender, on the gender gap, on diverse people and embracing our values," he said. "We have all kinds of examples of people, including on school boards all across this country. It's not the white guy party.

"The Republican Party was established to get rid of slavery, and to give former slaves their full civil rights. We passed three amendments to the Constitution. We actually did that. That was the Republican Party, and the Democratic Party fought us."