LAKE GENEVA, Wis. — The chairman of the Ohio Republican Party has hit the message hard to his delegation on a daily basis: It's OK to vote early. In fact, it's encouraged.
It's a message that former President Donald Trump — usually the loudest critic in the room when it comes to the integrity of the early vote — has also hit every night via video at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
“The way we win is to swamp them,” Trump says. “If we swamp them, they can't cheat. It just doesn't work out. But if you can't make it [on Election Day], you need to make a plan, register, and vote any way possible.”
That message directly conflicts with a plank in the just-approved, scaled-back Republican platform, which calls for a return to strictly same-day voting, a decision that is typically made on a state-by-state basis. The platform also calls for mandatory voter identification, proof of citizenship, and more sophisticated paper ballots.
The former president has distrusted early voting after watching early leads in key battleground states in 2020 gradually disappear as early votes favoring now Democratic President Biden were counted.
“Let's play by the rules as they exist,” Ohio GOP Chairman Alex Triantafilou said after Thursday's final state delegation breakfast of the convention. “Let's not lose the game because we don't like the rules.”
Ohio has had no-fault absentee voting — by mail and early in person — for about two decades. These are the first votes reported by counties on election night, and that vote has often favored Democrats.
“I'm going to keep pressing the question about early voting for Republicans to try to get them to do what the Democrats do a little better than us,” he said.
Mr. Triantafilou said he believes Ohio elections are well run.
“There is fraud,” he said. “We right now in Hamilton County just referred a whole slew of voter registrations that we know are phony, so it does happen. I will also recognize that it's not an everyday occurrence, but if there were fraud in our banking system, we would seek to terminate it so people have faith in the banking system.”
The Ohio delegation met for the last time at its hotel in Lake Geneva, Wis., about an hour south of the Fiserv Forum in downtown Milwaukee where the convention is taking place.
The night before, Ohio's U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance accepted the party's nomination as Trump's potential second vice president. The author of Hillbilly Elegy , he vowed not to forget his southwest Ohio roots, a message the campaign hopes will resonate with voters in working-class neighborhoods of battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
“J.D. Vance has basically put his finger on the pain of so many people in Ohio, a lot of people in Toledo ...,” said Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague, a voting delegate from Findlay. “Up in northwest Ohio, I don't know about everybody else, but I feel like we're forgotten a lot of times.”
U.S. Rep. Warren Davidson, whose southwest Ohio district includes Mr. Vance's native Middletown, said the candidate is committed to more than one campaign.
“It shows his commitment to a longer fight ...,” he said. “President Trump also picked somebody who changed his mind. J.D. Vance can go out and credibly say that 'I wasn't originally a Donald Trump guy. I was changed, not just because of what he said, but because of what he did.’”
On the delegation's final day in Wisconsin, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted hosted a “Made in Ohio” reception near their hotel on Geneva Lake. As Gov. Mike DeWine's number-two, he has focused on promoting technology in government as an economic tool. He is director of InnovateOhio.
“If you look at our InnovateOhio board, it was J.D., Bernie Moreno, and Vivek Ramaswamy,” he said. “We've had a lot of the stars of the Republican Party right now who are part of the InnovateOhio board.”
Of Mr. Vance, he said, “He represents a different generation that has a different perspective of events of recent history.”
Though at 56 he is 17 years older than Mr. Vance, Mr. Husted counts himself as part of that next generation.
“I do, particularly when you look at it through the window of your children ...,” he said.
Mr. Husted is one of three potential candidates for Ohio governor in 2026 among the delegates. The others are Mr. Sprague and Attorney General Dave Yost.
As her first convention draws to a close, delegate Beverly Hirzel, 78, of Walbridge, president of the Wood County Republican Women's Club, said she has enjoyed networking with colleagues from across the nation.
“We're 77,000 women across the United States,” she said. “In Ohio we may be 1,300 and growing. We've got a lot of work to do.”
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