[Former] Florida Republican Party chairman Jim Greer claimed his party was indeed trying to limit early voting to suppress Democratic votes. “It’s done for one reason and one reason only,” Greer told the Palm Beach Post, before saying that Republicans essentially believed, “we’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us.”
In 2012, then-Pennsylvania state House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R) hailed the passage of Voter ID in his state and suggested it would be a boon to the GOP presidential nominee, Mitt Romney.
“Voter ID, which is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania: Done,” Turzai said while recounting his state party’s accomplishments.
After Romney lost the state, the state’s Republican Party chairman still said Voter ID helped.
“We probably had a better election,” the chairman, Robert Gleason, said. “Think about this: We cut [Barack] Obama by 5 percent, which was big. A lot of people lost sight of that. He beat [John] McCain by 10 percent; he only beat Romney by 5 percent. And I think that probably photo ID helped a bit in that.”
Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) offered similar comments during the 2016 presidential election.
“I think Hillary Clinton is about the weakest candidate the Democrats have ever put up,” Grothman said, adding: “And now we have photo ID, and I think photo ID is going to make a little bit of a difference as well.”
In 2020 Trump opposed expanded mail-in balloting. He said such a thing would lead to “levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
Georgia House Speaker David Ralston (R) said the expanded mail balloting in his state “will be extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives.”
“If Republicans don’t challenge and change the U.S. election system, there will never be another Republican president elected again,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said on Fox News on Nov. 8.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said much the same on Fox on Nov. 30: “If we accept this universal mail-out balloting to people who didn’t even request ballots, I don’t think Republicans will ever win another national election again.”
A candidate for Arizona secretary of state, Mark Finchem, sending a fundraising email saying, “I will protect the elections from the Steal and make sure that Arizona is the Red State it REALLY is!”
Perhaps needless to say, those who oversee elections like a secretary of state shouldn’t say their goal is to make sure one party or another wins.