Former President Trump has attacked the legitimacy of early voting and mail-in voting for years, but his campaign and the Republican National Committee launched a “massive” and “revolutionary” effort this week to encourage both methods of voting in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

In an email advertising a website called Translator“As President Trump has consistently said, voting by mail, voting early and voting on Election Day are all good options,” Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley said in a statement.

But mail-in voting is plagued by fraud, a theory the Republican presidential candidate has falsely claimed cost him the White House four years ago, and he continues to reject the popular voting method, complicating his own party's efforts to encourage more people to vote.

In an interview with TV host Dr. Phil McGraw Broadcast on TuesdayWhatley's statement came the same day that Trump said mail-in voting “should not be allowed” and falsely claimed that “if we have mail-in voting, there will always be massive fraud.”

He criticized California for mailing ballots to every voter and falsely claimed that Republicans automatically lose elections in the state and that many voters receive up to seven ballots each.

“If Jesus came down and was the vote-taker, I'd win California, right?” he said. “In other words, if I had honest vote-taker, really honest vote-taker, I'd win big with Hispanics.”

Trump, 2020 Lost CaliforniaHe won by more than 5 million votes over his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris' home state of New Jersey.

Despite efforts by Trump campaign officials and Republicans, it's too late to rebuild confidence in mail-in voting among the former president's supporters before Election Day, said David Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer who heads the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research.

“They still believe that in their hearts,” he said of Trump's falsehood that mail-in voting is rigged. “He's strengthened that, and no official press release from the Republican National Committee or his official website is going to change that.”

He added that the “Swamp the Vote” website and other efforts by Republicans to promote different voting methods are good and normal efforts to increase participation, regardless of what candidates say.

Becker said voting by mail dates back at least to the Civil War and has been embraced by both parties, with Republicans traditionally supporting it more than Democrats because Republican voters tend to be older and voting by mail allows them to participate in democracy without having to wait in line at the polls.

But in 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic prompted more states to mail ballots to every voter, Trump denounced those votes as inherently fraudulent.

According to Census BureauIn the 2020 election, 43% of Americans voted by mail and 26% voted in person before Election Day.

in President Trump's speech “The fraudulent mail-in balloting represents the Democrats' most brazen and outrageous attempt at election theft,” Trump said on Jan. 6, 2021, as he called on his supporters to march to the U.S. Capitol building near the White House as Congress was certifying the results of the presidential election.

Four years after Trump's defeat, Republicans have largely moved away from voting by mail.

in February Survey A Pew Research Center survey found that 28% of Republicans said any voter who wants to should be able to vote by mail, down significantly from 2020, when 49% of Republicans thought so.

An overwhelming majority of Democrats (87% in February and 84% in 2020) support making mail-in voting available to all voters.

Still, Republican leaders and conservative activists are trying to rebuild voters' faith in the electoral process.

On Tuesday, the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee said “patriots should take advantage of the method that works best for them, whether that be voting by mail, voting early or voting on Election Day.”

The paper praised Swamp the Boat, a website that allows voters to request ballots by mail, as “the first non-government website to give voters full access to Pennsylvania's election toolkit,” even though it is “connected to the Pennsylvania state government.”

Turning Point Action, a youth group led by right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, is promoting an initiative it calls “Chase the Vote,” which aims to use “ballot-chasing armies” to visit voters' homes in battleground states and convince them to vote by mail.

“The radical left is beating us at the polls,” Turning Point's website states.

Appearing at Turning Point June EventsReferring to Kirk and Whatley, Trump said, “I said to Charlie, I said to Michael, 'Look, we don't need votes. We got more votes than anybody's ever got. We need to monitor the vote. We need to protect the vote. We need to stop the steal. We don't need votes.'”

He also said that mail-in voting is “unsafe” and that ballot drop boxes are “terrible.”