Former Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell says GOP must improve early voting message to win elections

Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell says that in order for Republicans to win future elections, they have to embrace early voting. 

"As we approach this November, we have to start to make sure that we are playing with a full deck of cards on our side," Blackwell told the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show. "We have to improve our early voting take, or we're going to get beaten once again."

On Tuesday, Ohioans rejected an initiative titled "Issue 1" which would have raised the threshold required to pass a constitutional amendment from a simple majority of ballots to a supermajority of 60%.

Blackwell says he believes the results could have been different if the GOP had gotten ahead on early voting in that special election.

"The proponents of this amendment to raise the threshold won in 66 of our 88 counties," he explained. "But we still lost because there was a hard effort at the early vote count, and we couldn't make up the difference on Election Day."

Blackwell added that while Republicans have improved a little on early voter messaging, it's still not enough.

"We have to cross the goal line, we actually have to get it done. And we have to play the full board game." he said. "We have to play in all 88 counties in the state of Ohio. We have to play in all 50 of the states. Even if we have some key 12 to 15 states that we're playing it, we can't leave any state uncovered."