New PAC Encourages Pennsylvania Republicans to Adapt to Mail-In Voting

Two and a half years after Democratic Governor Tom Wolf and a Republican-controlled legislature enacted no-excuse absentee voting, many right-leaning Pennsylvanians still resist adjusting to the new system. 

Arnaud Armstrong can sympathize. The Allentown native and 2018 University of Pittsburgh graduate has worked in various communication and grassroots roles for GOP campaigns and always found in-person voting ideal from a civic standpoint. But the lead organizer of Win Again PAC, a committee that formally launched last weekend at the conservative Pennsylvania Leadership Conference near Harrisburg, says it behooves his party compatriots to mount more spirited efforts to win absentee votes.  

“Are we happy that we’re in this position? No,” he told The Pennsylvania Daily Star. “[But] we can’t do anything legislatively right now to change these laws and no-excuse absentee voting. If that is where we’re at, then we’re screaming into the wind.” 

Only when his party finally returns to power, he said, can it finally secure major policy changes for election integrity like voter identification. And returning to power, he reasoned, means improving performance among absentee voters.

“We have to play the game,” he insisted. “We can’t keep leaving tools out on the field.” 

Republicans’ remote chance of walking back the mail-in voting expansion diminished even further last year when Democratic state Attorney General Josh Shapiro was elected to succeed Wolf and his party won a majority of state House seats. Confronted with this state of affairs, Armstrong and two prominent associates responded by founding an organization to champion an absentee-voting counteroffensive. 

Having worked as a regional field director on Donald Trump’s 2020 staff in Nevada, Armstrong would soon serve as operations director for Lisa Scheller’s 2022 campaign against Congresswoman Susan Wild (D-PA-7). In the months before the general election, Scheller’s team worked closely with former Lehigh County Commissioner Dean Browning (R) in his race against soon-to-be state Senator Nick Miller (D-Allentown). 

Scheller came painfully close to ousting Wild, getting 49.2 percent of the vote. But the result spurred hope for the three Republicans that, in the future, they could boost their party’s strength in absentee voting and turn what would otherwise be close losses into victories. 

“[The experience] cemented what we knew was a problem, but it brought it home that we can’t keep losing by this margin and expect to win,” Armstrong recalled.  

In upcoming election cycles, Win Again aspires to drive up Republican mail-in numbers in the Keystone State. Scheller, a well-connected manufacturing executive, is the group’s senior political advisor and Browning, a former corporate chief financial officer, handles the outfit’s statistical analysis. 

At present, Republicans desiring to challenge the Democrats’ absentee voting prowess face some stark numbers. Last year, Pennsylvania saw a three-to-one ratio of Democrat-to-Republican mail-in votes. Democrats moreover enjoyed a four-to-one advantage in mail-in votes for John Fetterman’s Senate effort against Republican Mehmet Oz and a five-to-one lead for Shapiro against gubernatorial challenger and state Senator Doug Mastriano (R-Gettysburg).

All told, Win Again determined the Democrats’ dominance in mail-in voting cost the GOP 153,779 net votes from Pennsylvanians who don’t always participate in elections. It also apparently deprived the party of two congressional races, control of the state House and important state Senate seats. 

Armstrong explained this is inevitable when one party embraces early voting and essentially allows its base a month to vote while the other party largely gives its base one day to cast its ballots. 

“The Democrats are out on the field, they’re scoring points [and] we’re in the locker room waiting for the game to start,” he said. “And that doesn’t make sense.” 

He added that getting Republicans to embrace early voting in Pennsylvania has proved more difficult than elsewhere because most states allow such ballot-casting to happen in person. In Pennsylvania, voters hoping to participate in an election early must complete an absentee ballot.

Armstrong said he is nevertheless cheered that many party notables including Trump and Mastriano acknowledge that success in future elections means concerted endeavors to get mail-in votes. At the PLC this weekend, Trump aide and pollster Kellyanne Conway as well as Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis gave speeches saying as much.

“People are really getting it,” he said. “There’s been a palpable shift just in the last couple months on this issue…. Our challenge is going to be… getting that message out door by door, phone call by phone call.”

The next big step for Win Again’s leaders is building a robust network of Republican candidates and county Republican committees to engage their endeavor. As that system grows, the PAC will proceed to conduct direct voter outreach especially to persuade GOP voters who infrequently make it to the polls to apply for absentee ballots. 

Armstrong expects upcoming fundraising efforts will soon enable the organization to spread its message more broadly through advertising. For now, he hopes grassroots excitement will help Win Again cultivate a movement to revamp Republicans’ vote-getting methods. 

“We have to go after those low-propensity voters,” he said. “It’s not about votes anymore, it’s about ballots. And we have to get into the game.”

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Bradley Vasoli is managing editor of The Pennsylvania Daily Star. Follow Brad on Twitter at @BVasoli. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Ballot Drop Box” by OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. CC BY-SA 2.0.

 

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