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Hunters, Truckers And The Amish: Inside Republicans’ ‘Aggressive’ New Ballot-Chasing Plan For November

If the Republican Party's massive Get Out To The Vote (GOTV) campaign goes according to plan, every hunter, trucker and Amish person across Pennsylvania will have a ballot in their hands come November.

For many years, there were restrictions on how the Republican National Committee and presidential campaigns could work with canvassing groups, but that changed in March when an advisory opinion from the Federal Election Commission loosened restrictions on collaboration between these groups.

Currently, much of the Republican Party's turnout efforts are outsourced to prominent conservative organizations that are running aggressive, low-key efforts in several states, including Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, The Daily Caller reported.

“80,000 votes [in Pennsylvania] “It's the Amish that are going to decide in 2020. Let's take a closer look. There are 90,000 Amish in Pennsylvania. That's the election. We're going to get the Amish vote, we're going to the farmers' markets, we're going to their villages, we're going to their towns. We're going to meet them where they are,” Scott Pressler, founder of Early Vote Action, told the Caller.

“There are 80,000 truck drivers in Pennsylvania. A lot of them won't vote on Election Day because they're driving their trucks. So we're trying to get them their mail-in ballots. We're trying to get them to vote early, because how are they going to vote if they're driving? That 80,000 number could very well be the number that wins Pennsylvania.” He continued:

A Republican spokesperson told the Caller that for several months the Republican National Committee has also been working with Turning Point Action on voter turnout efforts. Various other groups that work with Turning Point Action, including Pressler's Early Vote Action and Cliff Maloney's Pennsylvania Chase, also told the Caller that they communicate frequently about the party's activities and consistently share data as the election approaches.

“We're aligned with the party. We're aligned with the statewide campaigns, coordinating as much as we can legally and sharing data so that we're all working in harmony,” Maloney told the Caller.

Turning Point Action has led a significant number of get-out-the-vote efforts across the country. On the right, the Republican National Committee is “mimicking the hub-and-spoke model” of the Democratic Party, a spokesperson told the Caller.The party will act as the “quarterback” and oversee GOTV activities while grassroots organizations focus on their areas of expertise and meet with the party regularly to provide updates.

Turning Point Action, which is only just a part of its current work, decided it was time to get serious about voter turnout after the 2022 election. The group told the Caller that the new leadership of the Trump-backed Republican National Committee is willing to support a local outreach program, something the group hasn't done before.

To strengthen its efforts, Turning Point Action has developed an app that provides information about who the least likely voters are in an area. Once identified, app users are provided with information such as: Door-to-door canvassing scripts, postcards, and text messages used to reach individuals.

A Turning Point Action spokesperson told the Caller that the organization has several hundred full-time staffers dedicated to voting outreach in Arizona and Wisconsin. The spokesperson added that the organization's original plan was to focus on Georgia, but decided there were more opportunities there and is now ramping up efforts there.

“In a given area, we have between 400 and 600 disengaged voters. We assign full-time staff to that area whose goal is to knock on the doors of those 400-600 disengaged voters, get to know them and be a good neighbor and resource for them. Voters ages 18-20 are assigned a manager who reports to them, who then goes on to the state director and then the enterprise director. Everyone is accountable from start to finish for the process,” a spokesperson told the Caller.

Turning Point Action has focused its staff primarily in Arizona and Wisconsin, while other groups are using the app to target other states. In Pennsylvania, which both Democrats and Republicans have positioned as one of the most crucial states in the election, Messrs. Pressler and Maloney are waging a complex effort.

Using its own app modeled after Turning Point Action's, Pressler's Early Vote Action is targeting key demographics that Pressler believes could flip the state to the Republican Party, including the Amish, truck drivers, veterans and hunters. Pressler explained that there are 800,000 veterans and 930,000 hunters in Pennsylvania, but 30% of those hunters are not registered to vote.

“When the state lost 80,000 people, that number is now over 300,000, and it may very well be hunters, gun owners and gun enthusiasts who save Pennsylvania,” Pressler told the Caller.

“So we've spent the last year and a half visiting every gun show, gun store and shooting range – the Monroeville Gun Show, the American Outdoor Gun Show, the Philadelphia Expo Center – to meet hunters where they are and try to get their vote in person,” he continued.

Like Turning Point Action's app, Pressler's app gives its 30,000 users the ability to call, text or write postcards from anywhere in the country to low propensity voters in states like: Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.

“There's one woman in particular named Marcella, who as a grandmother has written over 2,500 hand-written postcards from California to Pennsylvania alone,” Pressler said.

While Pressler is focused on getting ballots into the hands of thousands of Pennsylvanians, Maloney's group is preparing to get ballots to the drop boxes.

“We're going to hire 120 full-time ballot trackers from September 1 through Election Day. They're going to knock on 500,000 doors, but they're going to focus on Republicans who have mail-in ballots on their dining tables,” Maloney told the Caller. “And this is important because in 2020, Trump lost by 80,000 votes, and 141,000 Republicans — and I'm not counting independents — 141,000 Republicans requested a ballot. They received a ballot and didn't return it. Why would they do that? Nobody knocked on their door.”

Starting Sept. 1, 120 vote-tracking crews will be sent to 10 locations across the state to canvass doors, but in the meantime, Maloney will continue to raise money for the effort, which has just $500,000 left to reach its $2.5 million goal.

As the RNC expands its field operations and grassroots organizations work on the ground, the party is also focusing on efforts to ensure the integrity of elections.

Before the RNC leadership change, legal experts had expressed concerns about the current state of election integrity. In March, a Daily Caller analysis found that several key battleground states, including those that helped put Biden in the White House, were poised to continue using many of the election procedures that infuriated Republicans in 2020 in 2024.

Republicans have filed numerous lawsuits, many of them over state voter rolls, since President Trump's daughter-in-law Lara and North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Michael Whatley took control of the party. (Related: Exclusive: New face of election integrity unveils strategy for November)

“The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee are much better prepared this time around, and while they have a lot of work to do, they've done a really good job of hiring the right team and dedicating the right resources to it,” Mike Davis, a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and founder of the Article III Project, previously told the Caller.

Despite the RNC's widespread activities, some laws remain in effect, but Maloney said that's OK, it just makes their work more important.

“In Pennsylvania, you have a 50-day deadline for mail-in voting, which is crazy, but it's the reality. So we have no choice but to go with the rules. For a while, we were hoping that lawmakers would change it, and they didn't. We were hoping that the courts would change it, and they didn't,” Maloney told the Caller. “And now I think we're just looking in the mirror and saying, 'It's time to go to war.'”