Donald TrumpThe Republican Committee presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee announced a massive “election integrity operation” on Friday, pledging to deploy 100,000 volunteers and lawyers in battleground states to “protect the vote and ensure a major victory” in November.
In a news release, officials said they wanted the volunteers and attorneys to oversee logic and accuracy testing, early voting, vote tabulation, mail-in ballot processing and Election Day voting, as well as election campaigns, audits and recounts. The publication suggests they may also want to recruit poll workers.
“Having the right people to count ballots is just as important as turning out voters on Election Day,” Trump said in the press release.
“The RNC is hiring hundreds of election integrity officers around the world – more than ever before, as our party will recruit thousands of additional monitors to protect the 2024 election. These campaign officials in states are charged with recruiting, training, and where possible, making poll workers and poll workers rotate day in and day out,” said the RNC co-chair Lara Trump.
Poll tracking is a normal part of elections — both parties do it — but experts warn that unwieldy operations could be a problem. And as Trump and his allies continue to make false claims about the 2020 election, some experts worry that authorizing these types of polling place observers could hinder normal election operations or intimidate voters.
The Republican version notes that they plan to work with “passionate grassroots coalitions deeply invested in the fight against voter fraud.”
The planned operation would double the RNC’s promised 50,000-person operation starting in 2020, although some experts said both figures were ambitious and unrealistic. The RNC did not respond to a request for data on how many people had volunteered or been employed in the recent elections.
“I’ve run a program like this with real people,” said Justin Levitt, a former adviser in the Biden White House on democracy issues who previously worked at the Justice Department on voting issues. “We did very well and brought in several tens of thousands.”
In particular, he said, recruiting people to monitor voter fraud is even more difficult than hiring poll workers.
“They recruit people to stand there and watch for something that’s not going to happen.” Can you please come and wait 15 hours for the UFO?” he said.
Marc Elias, a leading Democratic elections lawyer, agreed that the 100,000 number was unrealistic but said he still had concerns about the plans.
“I think they’re going to conduct a massive voter suppression operation that will involve very, very large numbers of people and very, very large numbers of lawyers,” he said. “I think we should take the RNC literally and seriously – except for their numbers.”
Lauren Groh-Wargo, executive director of Fair Fight PAC, the political advocacy group of the eponymous voting rights group in Georgia, said the effort would harm election administration.
“The Republican National Committee’s new voter suppression unit is just the latest version of their cynical playbook to divide and intimidate voters and steal Americans’ votes by creating an operation based on the lie of voter fraud,” she said in a statement.
Until 2018, the RNC’s poll-watching plans were limited by a consent decree, which required the RNC to seek court approval to prove that poll-watching was not discriminatory.
That order was introduced after Democrats sued the RNC, accusing it of sending armed, off-duty police officers to patrol polling places in minority neighborhoods in 1981. The order required them to seek prior court approval to monitor opinion polls, but expired at the end of 2017 after 35 years.
Poll observers are a normal and useful part of the election process if they are properly trained and do not interfere with administrators’ work, said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, a group that helps support election officials. A 100,000-strong army would present a different dynamic, he said, but noted that election workers are prepared to deal with unruly observers if they show up.
“They will protect their voters’ right to vote without intimidation. “If observers in any way conflict with the interests of voters or interfere with poll watchers, they will be dealt with according to the laws of the state,” he said.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
