Hannity Calls on Republicans to Embrace Mail-In Voting: ‘They Need to Accept the Rules as They Are’
Sean Hannity opened his show on Wednesday by calling on Republicans to use all legal means available to exercise their right to vote.
His remarks came the day after Republican Herschel Walker lost his bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in Tuesday’s runoff election in Georgia. Hannity gifted Walker copious amounts of airtime in recent months to no avail.
Democrats have by and large dominated Republicans in mail-in and early voting over the last couple of election cycles thanks in part to former President Donald Trump, who made dubious claims about alleged voter fraud via these methods.
Hannity had previously shared some of these concerns and expressed them in an interview with Trump in 2020, where he talked up allegations of voter fraud.
On Wednesday, the Fox News host said that while he would run elections differently, Republicans should work within the existing system to elect their preferred candidates.
“It’s time now for Republicans to start paying a little bit of attention and embracing the voting system that we have and not the one that they wish that they had,” Hannity said. “They need to accept the rules as they are, not as they want them to be.”
Hannity said once Republicans win key statewide races, then they can focus on changing election laws as they see fit.
“And then after they win governorships, after they win state legislatures, then they can change laws over time, add all the integrity measures for elections that they want, and put it in the process of our elections,” he continued. “But that means they need to play what is the early voting game, the ballot harvesting game. They need to do it well, if not better than the Democrats, all legally, of course.”
The host went on to note that in many races, Republicans are essentially starting out at a deficit of hundreds of thousands of votes because GOP voters tend to shun early and mail-in voting.
“It was estimated yesterday when voting started in Georgia, that Herschel Walker – because early voting, mail-in voting in Georgia – he went into yesterday’s election down 200,000 to 250,000 votes. That’s insane. There is a reluctance and resistance of Republicans to vote by mail or vote early.”
Hannity issued a wake-up call to his viewers.
“This is the system,” he declared. “This is the current reality. Do I think it’s the best system? No, I think it’s bad. Now, Democrats have embraced the system. Republicans have not – to their own detriment. They ignore this reality.”
He went on to say that he’d make Election Day a national holiday and do away with voting machines.
“In a Hannity-perfect world, if I laid out what would have the most integrity and everybody would have confidence in the resulting elections, when Republicans win gubernatorial races and state legislatures, I would make Election Day a national holiday,” Hannity stated. “I would have paper ballots only. I would have partisan observers, people from every party – they would watch the voting in every precinct and the vote-counting after the polls close.”
Watch above via Fox News.
