Republicans have turned suburban areas into a recruiting ground for their election day army of election monitors, with plans to deploy some in urban Democratic epicenters that have remained the focus of conservatives’ erroneous claims of voter fraud.
The strategy has the potential to be uniquely disruptive to voters and election officials this fall, nonpartisan election experts say, given that volunteers would be sent to monitor areas with different political and demographic makeups than their own — and potentially different protocols for screening and counting. ballots.
“In addition to the risks of voter intimidation, I think the strategy also has the potential to disrupt the electoral process overall,” said Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.
“In short, it is good to have representatives from all political parties and campaigns observing the electoral processes. This is normal,” he said. “The problem arises when there is an effort like this that appears to be aimed at recruiting people for the express purpose of uncovering fraud that does not exist.”
During the 2020 election, many of Republicans’ baseless claims of voter fraud were aimed at large urban areas in swing states — including Detroit, Philadelphia and Milwaukee — where large populations of Black and Latino voters voted. Although no widespread fraud was uncovered, the allegations continued to be a prominent rallying cry from elements on the right, who have spent the last four years preemptively building the idea that this could happen again in 2024.
The Republican National Committee began in-person recruiting efforts this month for its “Protect the Vote” project — which seeks to mobilize a force of 100,000 volunteers and advocates — with a series of events, mostly in swing states, designed to sign up and begin training people to be election monitors. Although the RNC does not send all of its volunteers from suburban areas to urban areas, several of its initial recruitment events say this is a key component of the strategy.
So far, the Republican Party has held events in Oakland County, Michigan, a blue-leaning suburban area outside Detroit; Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a suburban area outside of Philadelphia; Nassau County, New York, an area on Long Island that has turned redder in electoral contests; as well as in suburban areas of Charlotte, North Carolina and Atlanta, Georgia.
All five areas are much whiter and more republican than nearby large cities, although Oakland, Bucks, Nassau, Mecklenburg and Fulton counties have gone Democratic in the last presidential election.
Plans are also underway to hold events in or around Phoenix and Las Vegas early next week, RNC officials said.
In Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina, poll watchers can serve in any county as long as they are registered voters in the state. But in Pennsylvania and New York, they must serve only in the county in which they are registered to vote.
“Where we station our staff depends on state laws,” said RNC spokesman Gates McGavick. “If a state has rules that you can only be a poll watcher in your county, then obviously we adhere to that.”
Asked at a recent event whether the Republican Party’s broader strategy was specifically to recruit poll volunteers from suburban areas and send them to cities for elections, RNC Michael Whatley said yes, explaining that, “if there is capacity across the state to do so, then obviously we will deploy them.”
McGavick added that, “in states where it makes sense for us to allocate our bodies to larger cities, then yes, they can come from areas outside of larger cities.”
Poll watching is a normal part of elections in which both major parties participate. But nonpartisan election experts said Republicans plan to send out-of-town monitors in states where it is allowed, who have been told for years that voter fraud is rampant in Democratic cities could sow chaos.
“When you think about [tens of thousands] of potential poll watchers or poll watchers going from a suburban county to a more urban area, ostensibly to monitor evidence of voter fraud, I would have two main concerns, and the first is the potential for voter intimidation, especially when you consider the issue of race. dynamics of some of these communities and some of the accusations that were made after the 2020 election,” said Diaz of the Campaign Legal Center.
The second concern, Diaz and others explained, was that insistent questioning, even if legal and non-threatening, could still create major disruptions.
“Even if the voters themselves don’t feel intimidated, even if [watchers] don’t stop people from voting, if you have these election observers from outside the county or election district coming in to second guess and question every single thing that election officials are doing, that can be extremely disruptive to the administration of elections,” Diaz said.
It was possible, he said, that these efforts could “contribute to longer lines” or put “increased pressure on election offices and election workers who are already under-resourced in most of the country.”
In 2020, for example, hundreds of people, most of them Republican and nonpartisan white monitors signed up to be election challengers at the TCF Center in Detroit, where the vast majority of poll workers were black. Witnesses have said in sworn statements and interviews that felt uncomfortable with the way certain election candidates treated black workers, arguing that white competitors were harassing workers and accusing them of wrongdoing without evidence.
RNC spokespeople did not respond to questions about whether parts of its election integrity strategy could present challenges related to race and election operations. Whatley, however, rejected any notion that the drills included any elements of intimidation tactics.
“We work hard on the front end to ensure there is no voter intimidation. Let’s respect the process. Let’s respect the people who work the polls and let’s respect the voters,” Whatley told reporters after a recent RNC event on Long Island.
An opaque but growing effort
RNC officials declined to provide the total recruitment numbers the effort has produced so far. They also provided few details about the trainings, refused to answer questions about whether volunteers are being or will be trained on how to deal with differences in communities and protocols, and repeatedly did not allow the media to observe the training sessions. training.
Participants in some sessions who spoke to NBC News described them as thin on detail and not much different from previous guidance provided by local party officials on how best to perform election monitor duties. Others said the sessions were just preliminary recruitment events and that they were told other in-person and virtual sessions will be held in more detail.
Until 2018, the RNC’s election observation plans were significantly limited by a consent decree, which required court approval to prove that any election observation work was not discriminatory. This meant the party’s 2020 effort was its first in decades. And while the Republicans tried to gather 50,000 volunteers During this cycle, specific organizational and in-person training efforts were impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Republican strategists and election workers, meanwhile, said they see no problem bringing volunteers into urban areas to monitor elections, as long as they follow the rules.
A problem, many said, only arises when unsanctioned groups take on the responsibility of monitoring polling places. In 2022, this included the right groups like Clean Elections USA in Arizona.
“I don’t know if it’s a problem to have two monitors at every polling place, you know, I think they’ll figure out that it’s not a problem,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican strategist in Arizona.
“I see a big difference between, say, party monitors and whatnot, and these roving bands of armed civilians who think they are lawmen,” he said, referring to Clean Elections USA.
Whatley indicated that the party’s election integrity effort had, in fact, grown beyond the RNC.
“We interact” and “have a lot of conversations with” Trump-aligned outside groups — including the America First Policy Institute — regarding election integrity and the recruitment of election monitors, he said after the recent RNC event on Long Island.
“We will talk and work with anyone who has an organization that thinks election integrity is serious,” he said.
Ashley Hayek, executive director of America First Works, the advocacy arm of AFPI that is involved in election integrity efforts, said the group is conducting its own recruitment efforts and trainings to monitor polls, as well as encouraging people to participate in training conducted by the RNC.
Asked whether her group’s trainings taught participants how to avoid intimidating voters or disrupting the voting process, Hayek said: “Everyone who has been part of our program has been upstanding citizens who want to make sure that every citizen has a vote. registered and casts a vote. ballot that is counted once.”
Hayek said AFW plans to recruit volunteers only for its own efforts in the counties where those volunteers live.
Bill Gates, a Republican elected election official in Maricopa County, Arizona, who faced threats during the 2020 and 2022 elections, said none of the GOP’s national strategy bothered him — but said the problem is that it is based on a lie fundamental.
“It doesn’t really matter what the intention is, as long as they comply with the law, as long as they exercise the right that they have to observe,” he said of the RNC’s election integrity efforts.
“But to the extent that people are being told that ‘the 2020 election was stolen, so we need you to participate in this effort’ — that’s troubling to me,” said Gates, who has decided not to run for re-election to his position this year due to the threats it has suffered in recent electoral cycles. “It’s not participation in this effort – it’s that they are being lied to about what happened in 2020.”
The repeatedly debunked allegations of widespread voter fraud in 2020 have, however, been the prominent theme in Whatley’s speeches at the RNC’s election integrity events.
“We cannot allow what happened in 2020 to happen again,” he said at the June 21 event in Westbury, N.Y.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
