Many readers are likely unfamiliar with GOP activist Scott Presler. He is the founder of the Early Vote Action network, a nationwide group of grassroots activists dedicated to getting out the GOP vote. According to EVA’s website, its purpose is to “register Republican voters and get them committed to vote early, absentee, by mail, or on Election Day – by any means necessary!”
Presler’s group was instrumental in reducing the Democrats’ 2020 registration advantage in Pennsylvania from more than 500,000 active voters to approximately 50,000 over four years. In doing so, he helped deliver the state to President Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
Presler delivered an urgent message to Republicans on Saturday. In a deadly serious tone, he pleaded with GOP voters to prioritize early voting and mail-in voting. Failure to do so, he warned, will mean certain defeat.
“I’m not here to bring you a happy video. I’m here to give you a dose of reality. It’s August 29th. I want you to bookmark this… I’m here to tell you, Republicans are gonna lose everything this November unless we change things — and quickly,” he said.
Specifically, he warned of certain Democratic victories in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races, as well as in Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court justice races, if Republicans refuse to act.
You’re gonna lose the governorship in Virginia and you’re gonna have a Democrat. You’re gonna lose the governorship in New Jersey and you’re gonna have Mikie Sherrill, Murphy 2.0. And in Pennsylvania, where we have been working tirelessly, non-stop even since the election, we’re on the verge of having three Democrat Supreme Court justices retained until 2035.If you are only planning to vote on Election Day, on Tuesday, November 4th, consider the election’s gone, over, game over, you’ve already lost.
If voters don’t cast an early ballot or request a mail-in ballot now, he warned, “You are going to lose everything.”
However, Presler noted that we “still have 66 days to change things.”
But at the same time, I’m also making this as a ‘Scott was right video’ that if and when Republicans do not embrace early voting and mail-in voting, and we lose everything, I want to be able to point to this video and say, ‘Well, I tried to tell ya.’In 2022, the machines went down in Arizona on Election Day, and we have [Democratic Gov.] Katie Hobbs. … In Nevada, we lost an election by 8,000 votes because it snowed on Election Day. In Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, we have John Fetterman today, in part, because they ran out of paper on Election Day. And, if Republicans do not learn from history, we are undoubtedly going to repeat the same mistakes and then wonder why.
After Republicans were caught flat-footed in 2020 by the Democrats’ sweeping early-voting and mail-in ballot drive, the RNC under Michael Whatley and Lara Trump fought fire with fire in 2024 — and it changed everything.
The GOP would clearly prefer a return to a single Election Day, with absentee voting reserved for cases of genuine necessity. But unless and until that system is restored, Republicans can’t afford to ignore these methods of voting.
Presler is right. We must approach the 2025 elections with the same determination we brought to 2024.
Although the latest polls show Democrat Abigail Spanberger ahead of Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, Virginia’s current Lieutenant Governor, and Democrat Mikie Sherrill leading her Republican opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, in New Jersey, the gaps are narrowing in both races.
Robert Johnson, the co-founder of Black Entertainment Television, who has in the past supported both former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (but not in 2021) and Hillary Clinton, made a $500,000 donation to Earle-Sears’ campaign last week.
Johnson was incensed when a Spanberger campaign volunteer displayed a racist sign at a recent Earle-Sears event. The sign read, “Hey Winsome, if trans can’t share your bathroom, then blacks can’t share my water fountain.”
Johnson said he was “so appalled by that racist diatribe” that he “chose to show the voters of Virginia how Black Brothers stand up to defend and support their Black Sisters.”
Media coverage of the sign and the activist who carried it dominated national headlines. Whether that incident will wind up swaying the race is unclear.
Ciattarelli came within 3.2 points of defeating New Jersey’s sitting Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy in the state’s 2021 gubernatorial race. Throughout the election cycle, Murphy had been widely expected to cruise to victory. Although polls tightened as Election Day drew closer, the RealClearPolitics average of polls still showed Ciattarelli trailing by 7.8%.
It should also be noted that Trump outperformed polling estimates in the Garden State in 2024.
All of this is to say that both races are winnable for the GOP.
But the party must take Presler’s warning to heart. We must face the 2025 elections with the same focus on early voting and mail-in ballots as we did in 2024.
Presler concluded his message with a call to action.
Republicans, if you do not embrace early voting and mail-in voting for the upcoming Tuesday, November 4th, 2025 election, you will lose everything, and that’s gonna set us up for failure in 2026.If you are loyal to President Trump, if you are loyal to keeping the House, if you are loyal to keeping the Senate, then you do everything in your power to elect Republicans in PA, VA, and NJ this November. … Who’s gonna help?
Let’s hope the GOP listens.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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