ALBANY, New York — Voting by mail and early voting have worked to the advantage of Democrats in New York in recent years, giving them margins of victory in a long list of competitive races.
But now that the state has emerged as a national battleground for control of the House of Representatives, Republicans have quietly mounted an operation to reverse the trend in key constituencies.
Rep. Elise Stefanik is leading that push, which mirrors GOP efforts in other swing states. She is committing at least $1 million to boost early GOP turnout in an effort to shore up five of her congressional colleagues and help elect two new ones.
“Historically, we’ve seen that when Republicans benefit from the laws that Democrats have passed — and Democrats always try to make them work to their advantage — Republicans actually win,” Stefanik said. “We’re not going to allow Democrats to benefit from the way they’ve legislated in Albany.”
The stakes are high. Her efforts — and those of fellow Republicans in other swing states — could be a deciding factor in which party takes control of the House next year.
Republicans in most of New York have participated in nontraditional voting at a much lower rate than Democrats in recent years, largely because of GOP claims that activities like mail-in voting should be viewed with suspicion.
But Republicans across the country have recognized over the past year that discouraging their supporters from using all legal means to vote will only give Democrats a huge turnout advantage. Even former President Donald Trump has begun to couple his criticism of pre-election voting with calls for Republicans to do so.
“I’m going to secure our elections once and for all. We’re going to go to paper ballots. We’re going to have same-day voting, voter ID. We’re going to do it right. We’re going to have good, safe, beautiful elections,” Trump said in a video message this summer.
“But until then, Republicans must win, and we must use every means necessary to defeat Democrats. … Whether you vote early, by mail or in person, we are going to protect the vote.”
Whether these new efforts will work is one of the big questions in elections like the battleground congressional races in New York this fall. But Democrats predict the mixed message will undermine this election.
“It’s hard to convince your supporters that you want them to vote early when you’ve spent the last year saying they shouldn’t vote early,” said Senate Majority Leader Mike Gianaris, who authored a proxy voting bill that Stefanik has challenged in court. “The hypocrisy is clear.”
Stefanik plans to spend at least $1 million of the money she raised for the state party on boosting Republican turnout before Election Day, in a year when as many as seven districts are up for grabs.
Stefanik’s approach builds on one she’s used in her own elections, one she says makes her “the best-performing Republican when it comes to voting by mail and early in-person voting” in the state.
Her plan is part of a broader effort to help fellow New York Republicans keep control of the House. It relies on volunteers in the safest Republican seats, because while there are plenty of energetic conservatives in the districts held by Stefanik, Rep. Claudia Tenney and Rep. Nick Langworthy, there aren’t many doors worth knocking on locally.
Stefanik’s political operation has set up phone banking centers in these districts. Republicans based there can now call voters in contested seats and encourage them to request mail-in ballots or get to the polls early. Anyone who promises to do so will get a second call a few days later if the vote results indicate they haven’t done so.
“We had a lot of voters who were adamant that they were only going to vote on Election Day,” she said. “When we let them know that you can vote early in person, they were excited to do that.”
Those efforts are similar to those being made by Republicans in other states that will play a key role this fall. In places like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, party leaders have encouraged Republicans to turn out early. Trump’s campaign has launched a “Swamp the Vote” campaign to help voters cast ballots by mail, while conservative Turning Point Action is spending tens of millions of dollars to encourage early turnout in Michigan and Arizona.
In New York, early voting is a key part of the GOP’s plan to bolster its activity in seven key congressional races.
Meanwhile, two years after falling far short of expectations, New York Democrats have since regularly touted plans to overhaul their centralized efforts in the state. The state party has quadrupled its fundraising this year and opened dozens of field offices in competitive congressional districts.
Republicans have been less open about their efforts in recent months, but they are busy modernizing their centralized operations.
The state party’s federal account had raised $2.1 million as of late July, up from $1.2 million at that point in 2022. An additional “House GOP Battleground Fund” PAC that Stefanik launched has raised $2.7 million. And those are just two parts of a broader congressional effort in New York that Republicans expect to raise $100 million.
If Republicans fail to increase their turnout before Election Day, they will likely be at a significant disadvantage and will lag behind at the polls when Election Day rolls around in each of the districts they represent.
In 2019, New York established a nine-day early voting window. During the pandemic, it began experimenting with widespread mail voting, and a new law upheld by the courts in August means it will be a permanent feature of elections in the state.
Democrats have been quicker to capitalize on the new laws they’ve created, often performing about 12 points better among nontraditional voters compared to their results on Election Day. Just in February, Democrat Tom Suozzi was elected to replace George Santos in Congress after a virtual tie among voters who cast ballots on the Tuesday of the special election. The deciding factor for Suozzi was winning the pre-election vote by 14,000 votes.
Part of that success was due in part to Trump-era Republicans’ stance on nontraditional voting, when party leaders regularly suggested that mail-in voting was evidence of fraud. This year’s national Republican platform calls for “securing our elections” by supporting “same-day voting.”
Especially in New York, this kind of criticism often comes from Stefanik.
The state constitution has long been written to limit mail-in voting to a narrow range of circumstances, such as when a voter is ill or traveling on Election Day. Voters rejected a 2021 amendment that would have allowed unlimited mail voting. But a few years later, Democrats passed a bill that attempted to circumvent the restrictions by allowing widespread mail voting and counting those votes during the state’s early voting window.
“Kathy Hochul and extreme New York Democrats are attempting to destroy what remains of the integrity of New York’s elections,” Stefanik said in a statement announcing a lawsuit on the day the bill was signed. “Under Kathy Hochul’s failed leadership, elections are less secure and less transparent and will now be unconstitutional.”
The state’s Democratic-dominated court system dismissed Stefanik’s lawsuit this summer, meaning mail-in voting will remain a key part of the November election.
“I have always been in favor of legal proxy voting,” Stefanik said, adding that she simply opposed the new law, which “violated the New York Constitution.”
“We’re not going to let the Democrats try to abuse this system and the rules of the game that they’ve tried to set for themselves.”
