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With less than six weeks until the election, the Maine Republican Party is using former President Donald Trump’s “Too Big to Rig” slogan to encourage supporters to vote early.
Trump has continued to falsely claim Democrats and President Joe Biden benefited from voter fraud to “steal” the 2020 election. After criticizing mail-in and early voting, the Republican standard-bearer has also promoted those practices to make a victory “too big to rig.”
What’s the messaging: The Maine Republican Party has mailed flyers that include information on early, absentee and in-person voting while edging close to Trump’s false election claims in hopes of locking the one elector from the 2nd Congressional District down for Trump in the third straight election.
“Maine Patriot: Vote President Trump & Make This Election Too Big to Rig,” one side of a mailer featuring an image of Trump says. “Voting Early Is Safe & Secure.”
The other side of the mailer tells supporters to “swamp the vote” by voting for Trump in every round of Maine’s ranked-choice voting system because it “proves your intent.”
What they’re saying: Maine Republican Party Executive Director Jason Savage said Friday he thinks his party will always tend to see more of its supporters vote in person on Election Day rather than early or by mail, but the party wants voters to “not leave anything to chance.”
Amid Trump encouraging early voting after sowing doubts about it and still falsely claiming he won the 2020 election, Savage said Maine has “a pretty tight system” that is secure.
“But I certainly think there have been other problems in different states that have given people pause,” Savage added.
As for encouraging voters to put Trump down for every spot on the ranked-choice ballot, Savage acknowledged Trump and the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, are the only two serious contenders but said it is meant to avoid any confusion if recounts occur.
“If scanner doesn’t read a first choice for some reason, the second choice will be read in the same way,” Savage said.
Maine Democratic Party spokesperson Annina Breen said the mailers show the Maine GOP is “attempting to ease the minds of their voters and erase distrust sewn by their own lies and attacks against our electoral system and election workers.”
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What’s really happening: The mailers show a balancing act that Republicans are engaging in to promote early voting while Trump both supports and attacks that method in the home stretch of the campaign. In 2022, far more Democrats than Republicans requested absentee ballots.
The issue remains partisan. The Pew Research Center found 6 in 10 Americans favor policies in Maine and more than two dozen other states that allow early or absentee voting without an excuse, but while 82 percent of Democrats support that, only 37 percent of Republicans do. That was a sharp drop from 2018, when 57 percent of Republicans backed it.
What’s next: Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley will be in Bangor on Saturday for a “protect the vote” event, showing the party’s focus on this theme.
