President John Pudner traveled to Detroit, Michigan, to further analyze not only the state of the race, but how early voting has and continues to impact elections across our Republic, and as seen in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, these changes have influenced campaigns and non-profits across the Midwest. A city at the heart of post-2020 election tabulation controversies, President John Pudner and hosts Guy Gordon and Tom Jordan discuss the need to not only restore voter confidence in the Motor city and for conservatives to unite statewide, with the Michigan GOP only recently emerging from a costly and divisive leadership controversy, but also how it could very likely be non-profits, not the political parties or candidates, that decide the political future of the Great Lake state.
Non-profits have already been influential in states like Wisconsin, where Planned Parenthood, for example, has been able to amass tens of millions of dollars from out-of-state donors toward canvassing efforts that, while not advocating for a candidate, target liberal-leaning and moderate voters, give clear policy differences between opponents in key races, and in some cases, register or enable those voters to vote by mail or early. While other, conservative-leaning non-profits such as Right to Life also commit to these efforts, the major difference is in man and purchasing power, with Planned Parenthood paying $29 an hour just to knock on doors while Right to Life pays $15.
As Pudner details, however, the real difference maker in these elections will not only be grassroots activists getting involved, but candidates and non-profits playing the same game and utilizing the current election rules to their advantage.
For more in-depth analysis by President John Pudner on this topic, please click here. To learn more about TBOR Action's efforts on topics including election integrity, please click here.
The following transcript from this interview is presented in its entirety with minor edits:
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
early voting, non-profits, midterms, Planned Parenthood, doors, tax-deductible contributions
SPEAKERS
Guy Gordon, Tom Jordan, and TBOR Action President John Pudner
Tom Jordan 00:00
Election Day in 2024 is gonna happen long before November 5th. Did you know the first early voting dates are as early as September 16th In the state of Pennsylvania?
Guy Gordon 00:09
It's nuts, and you look back to 2022, a lot of these Republican candidates didn't even start putting their ads out until after that date when 40% of the voters had already cast their ballots prior to the campaigns even airing their first major ads, so lesson learned, because you saw what happened in the midterms. John Pudner, president of Take Back Our Republic Action joins us now. John, good to have you on the program. Thanks for your time, appreciate it.
John Pudner 00:35
Oh, thanks for having me.
Guy Gordon 00:37
Highlight the importance here. Why is there just this difference between the way Republicans look at early voting versus the way that Democrats have been looking at early voting in the past couple of elections?
John Pudner 00:49
There has been skepticism on the Republican side, and just to give you a feel, in Michigan, you started Election Day, 340,000 votes behind the midterms just from early voting. That was the margin for victory. Pennsylvania was the only one bigger, almost 600,000, and it doesn't have to be that way. I mean, Florida is the other way around, where 300,000 advantage in early voting for Republicans, but it does seem like Republicans are more and more open to voting in-person early, the mail-in still seems to have a stigma for them, but you can go vote early in most places.
Guy Gordon 01:21
So you look at 2022, and you see the mistakes that some of the Republicans have made, and maybe other campaigns as well, but they made mistakes. All this early voting stuff is pretty new as a novel idea that's now come to fruition. What can they do differently this time around to not create the same havoc they saw the midterms?
John Pudner 01:41
I think the national and state party are really making an effort to tell people you've got to bank your vote. You know, if there's a chance you have a job where you get called out of town unexpectedly, or elderly and have health issues, then you want to take advantage of this where there's some chance of missing Election Day. I still love Election Day, I love showing up then, but you just can't start this far behind, and I think that message is getting out there. There'll be more of an effort, but it's like not playing the first half of a football game, you just have to go in and make an effort for early votes just to, at least, keep it close.
Tom Jordan 02:22
How do you go about educating people and firing people up to go vote early?
Guy Gordon 02:28
So interesting. I mean, Planned Parenthood pays $29 an hour to go knock on doors, Right to Life pays $15, but the difference is Planned Parenthood has a product to sell, Right to Life doesn't sell anything, just a message they're trying to get out there. What needs to happen with those groups? Do donors need to step up and are they going to do so if they want to get more of these nonprofits to help get the message out there?
John Pudner 02:28
It's been a big effort. I've heard the party people been doing a pretty good job in the stomp, as have nonprofits, but the thing is remember to is so much of the liberal vote is turned out through these nonprofit, Soros funded groups, not through the Democratic Party. They just have so much money and so many people. An example across the lake here, Planned Parenthood plays people $29 an hour to knock on doors while the pro-life group pays $15. You can just recruit a lot of people on your side to just work, and if they just have so many more people on the streets, walking through the logistics, and trying to get people and, depending on the state, getting a ballot application at least right there done at the door. Republicans are always going to have to make a little more effort to persuade people, but just to make that argument that, as soon as your vote is in there, we don't need to keep pursuing you, we'll stop knocking on your door, we'll stop hounding you, once we have that vote in, we don't have to keep spending money to try to turn you out. Absolutely. The left figured out a long time ago that, if you can get tax deductible contributions to a lot of these C3's, they can turn out votes, so not only do you have a huge industry, like Planned Parenthood, with money to spend out of their profits, but then you have all the source-funded groups that everyone who gives a check is giving getting a tax deduction. I work with a group Faith and Freedom, and that's a C3 where we can turn out voters, we can educate him, we can't say vote for or against anyone, but the difference in being able to put a check into a big effort, that's what the left has done so well. And unfortunately, often, everyone is trying to run everything through Republican parties, but they're are just tax disadvantages or other things. There's certain things only a party can do, but registering people to vote, and getting your people who generally agree with you to the polls, nothing that couldn't really be done through nonprofits.
Tom Jordan 04:44
So there's a pot of money, and the Republicans are using it to try and get people to vote Republican. If I go and vote early, they're going to know that I voted early, and they're going to stop spending money on sending me information, and then they use that money to try and convince other folks to vote Republican?
John Pudner 05:04
Boy, you outline the speech exactly. That's exactly what happens, and the most persuasive way to turn someone out to vote is to knock on their door, and when you do all the math on that, it costs groups about $4 at door. I mean, by the time you house your canvassers, and pay them, and give them mileage...so you can imagine when there's an extra million Republicans that have to be turned out, as opposed to Democrats who've already voted, that's $4 million more conservatives have to spend to keep going to those doors every time they hit them.
Guy Gordon 05:41
Oh, yeah. It's much more efficient if they knew ahead of time that these people have already voted. This is really good information. Thanks so much.