Herschel Walker defeated: Is it time for Republicans to embrace mail-in and early voting?

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich indicated Tuesday night that Republicans needed to get over their apprehensions about early and mail-in voting if they want to win. 

‘Sure,’ Gingrich answered Fox News’ Sean Hannity when asked if GOP voters needed to drop their reluctance and vote early or by mail. ‘You have to play the game by the rules that are existing,’ the former House Speaker added. 

Hannity had pointed out that ‘for whatever reason’ Republicans have shied away from utilizing these voting methods, which resulted in a number of key losses during the 2022 midterms, including later Tuesday night in the Georgia Senate runoff election. 

As part of his false 2020 election fraud narrative, former President Donald Trump pushed that mail-in votes are not secure. He’s continued to say recently that the only form of voting he trusts is in-person on Election Day, conducted by paper ballots. 

This has meant that every Election Day, Republicans are playing catch-up, with many Democratic ballots already in.  

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich indicated Tuesday night that Republicans needed to get over their apprehensions about early and mail-in voting if they want to win

‘Sure,’ Gingrich (right) answered Fox News’ Sean Hannity (left) when asked if GOP voters needed to drop their reluctance and vote early or by mail. ‘You have to play the game by the rules that are existing,’ the former House Speaker added.

‘For example, if you want Generation Z voters you’ve got to be on TikTok, even if in fact in the long run we may abolish TikTok as a Chinese communist device,’ Gingrich argued. 

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‘It means that you have to recognize early voting,’ he continued.

‘It doesn’t do Republicans any good to save their TV money until October if they’ve had a third of the vote come in in September,’ he added. 

Gingrich’s comments came in the hours preceding another Republican loss in his home state of Georgia, as the Trump-backed Herschel Walker lost to incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in the state’s Senate runoff race. 

Once polls closed at 7 p.m., Warnock had a commanding, 30-point lead due to the early vote numbers – with Democrats primarily taking advantage of that method.  

Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker concedes to Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock Tuesday night in Atlanta 

Walker was able to catch up several times throughout the night, but the Associated Press called the race for Warnock just before 10:30 p.m. due to the bulk of the outstanding vote coming from the Atlanta area, which swings heavily Democratic. 

Hannity said he’d like to see Election Day made a holiday and limit mail-in ballots to the military and the infirm, but thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic many states have opened mail-in ballots to anyone who requests one. 

Gingrich also pointed out that one of the advantage of early, in-person voting is that the parties know which of their voters still need to get to the polls and can be better targeted. 

‘Democrats focus on elections. Republicans focus on campaigns,’ Gingrich argued. ‘We need to rethink from the ground up.’