The RNC wants Republicans to embrace early voting. Trump's rhetoric makes it tough

When Madison Gesiotto Gilbert ran for Congress in Ohio in 2022, it was in a fairly competitive district that Republicans were hoping to flip. Gilbert thought she had good odds of winning that race.

She lost. And she has a theory about what happened.

"We got killed on the early vote," Gilbert said. "And this is something that I think across the country there's been a stigma within the Republican Party about voting early."

Gilbert, who is now a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, said too many Republican voters that year waited to vote in person on Election Day. That includes voters who live in states with weeks of in-person early voting and no-excuse absentee/mail voting.

"I personally am not the biggest fan of early voting, of election season, as we call it now," she told NPR. "But the reality is, it's here and in a lot of places it may be here to stay. So until things change in the states prospectively, we have to be playing the same game that the Democrats are playing in order to win."

Ahead of this year's elections, Gilbert and the rest of the RNC are trying to get GOP voters comfortable with early and mail voting. But to do that, they have to counter a stigma, particularly against mail voting, that was created by Republicans themselves, including — most notably — former President Donald Trump.

Trump complicates the "Bank Your Vote" campaign

To get Republicans comfortable with those voting methods, the RNC has launched a "Bank Your Vote" campaign. As part of the initiative, the RNC launched websites for all 50 states, as well as websites in different languages aimed at various minority communities. And GOP candidates are being asked to direct their voters to the websites.

This past summer, Trump