Kari Lake-led Arizona grassroots machine mobilizes to boost early 2024 GOP voting

Grassroots groups in Arizona have started a program to encourage eligible Republican voters to cast ballots to help the GOP win 2024 elections, following hundreds of thousands of them not voting in the state's 2022 election.

"We have the early-voting list in Arizona," Matthew Martinez, field strategist at Turning Point Action told Just the News. "Arizonans can opt to vote early. ... In specific counties, Republican voters are not dropping off their ballots. If we have conversations with these voters and remind them to drop off their ballots, they’re more likely to do it."

Other groups in the collective include America Pack, Early Vote Action and America First Works.

"Individual groups knew [early voting] was an issue to focus on in 2024," says Valerie Turley, head of America Pack. "We all started talking about it, then the collaboration happened. We are going to work together to make sure we get the maximum outcome no matter what the results are." 

Republicans have control of the state legislature in Arizona, a Democrat governor, an independent senator and a Democrat senator. 

Specific counties in Arizona such as Maricopa have had a history of election issues, including reported problems with voting machines and long lines at polling stations as recently as 2022, which has led some Republicans, as Democrats have, to advocate for early voting.

However, such early-voting methods as mail-in balloting have also raised concerns about the potential for election fraud.

“It's kind of a fine line to walk,” says Tyler Bowyer, chief operating officer at Turning Point Action said. “We want people to vote. For voters that are less likely to vote and new voters, it is best to encourage early voting. We need to encourage early voting. We can’t trust they’re going to show up to vote for sure.”

According to data from the Arizona Secretary of State's website, there are about 4.1 million registered voters in the state and roughly 2.6 million ballots were cast in last year's election. 

While the rest of the grassroots groups are volunteer based, Turning Point Action is hiring people full time. 

“Our full plan is we are hiring full-time staff for ballot chasing," Bowyer said. "We have a volunteer core. But we have full time people that will be on the ground. We need that to compete with the left." 

He also said: “Volunteers can only do so much. We have a lot of grassroots activists in Arizona. The left is employing people eight hours a day to do this. We’re excited to work together with the other groups to make sure we get as many people out in the field as possible.”

This initiative was launched two months ago and announced by former GOP Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.

Lake said the groups have decided to get volunteers to make sure there's not a similar situation in which people in Arizona get a mail-in ballot but never sent it back.

"We don't want that to happen again," Lake said during a press conference in May. "So we're going to work to track those people down and make sure that they fill out their ballot and they get it mailed in."

She also said the Save Arizona Fund would be helping the operation financially. 

While Republicans have been slow to embrace early and mail-in voting, party leaders have begun to embrace it. 

"We have some voters who like to vote on Election Day, and we have to explain to them we can't allow Democrats to get a head start," Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel recently said. "We don't want to wait till the fourth quarter to start scoring touchdowns when you have four quarters to put points on the board."

Former President Donald Trump has also recently said the Republican Party must embrace mail-in voting. 

"We're going to have to play the game," he told Just the News in February.