GOP planning ‘army’ of poll watchers and lawyers to descend on blue districts

Poll challengers can force voters to answer questions about residence and voting status

Voters in St Joseph, Michigan, in 2020

Republican operatives are working to recruit an “army” of poll watchers, legal experts and other volunteers to flood Democratic-leaning communities in Michigan with GOP-aligned poll watchers who could theoretically try to interfere with upcoming elections.

The effort, first reported by Politico, is centered in a major swing state where Joe Biden narrowly won over Donald Trump in 2020, prompting cries of fraud from the Trump campaign that were never backed up with any hard evidence.

According to operatives who spoke to the news outlet, Republican organisations aligned with the national party are working to close what they see as a gap between election workers aligned with Democrats and those aligned with their own party. That includes both volunteers in observational roles like poll watchers as well as “poll challengers”, which have the power to challenge the validity of a person’s vote, as well as election site workers.

The massive effort is particularly targeting Wayne County, a Democratic bastion in the state home to Detroit, where Mr Biden saw strong support in 2020. That was confirmed by a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, who characterised the effort in a statement to Politico as an effort to make up for a disparity between Democrats and Republicans among poll watchers and challengers in the county, which should naturally have such a disparity given the demographics of the county.

“Democrats have had a monopoly on poll watching for 40 years, and it speaks volumes that they’re terrified of an even playing field,” RNC spokesperson Gates McGavick contended to the news outlet. “The RNC is focused on training volunteers to take part in the election process because polling shows that American voters want bipartisan poll-watching to ensure transparency and security at the ballot box.”

It’s illegal for poll challengers to question the validity of votes for purely political reasons. However, a large enough number of poll challengers intent on interfering in the process at a majority-Democrat precinct could theoretically try to cause delays or intimidate people from voting by making challenges frequently enough that (often understaffed) precinct staff cannot keep up.

“[I]t’s going to be an army,” one GOP operative declared at a training session, according to video obtained by Politico. “We’re going to have more lawyers than we’ve ever recruited, because let’s be honest, that’s where it’s going to be fought, right?”

Barb Byrum, clerk for Ingham County, Michigan, told The Independent that her office and others like it around Michigan were going to be vigilant for attempts by anyone to bend or break election law on the final day of in-person voting.

“[W]e take these issues seriously. I am in constant contact with my local clerks and ask them to notify me of any problems or issues throughout the day. If they are having trouble with enforcing election law in their precinct, my staff and I are ready to assist, and I have the Bureau of Elections and local Law Enforcement on speed dial. I do not mess around when it comes to ensuring that elections in my County are run to the letter of the law, and that includes everyone doing their part: Clerks, precinct inspectors, and poll challengers alike,” said Ms Byrum.

“My guess is that they will find pretty quickly that they are unable to do so as that basis does not exist. That will get discouraging and they will abandon their attempts to muck up the process,” she added.

Representatives for the RNC reportedly insisted to Politico in one statement that the effort was not centered around training volunteers to challenge voters. However, a later statement from the party citing election law directing volunteers to make challenges if they are suspicious about individual votes as well as a slide obtained by Politico from one Republican-aligned volunteer training session entitled “How to Challenge a Voter” significantly undermined that claim.

And the Republican Party’s top official working on “elections integrity” in the state was heard reiterating at one training session that the effort is focused on putting GOP-aligned poll workers in Democratic strongholds, suggesting that at a minimum Republicans believe those precincts are rife for opportunities to challenge ballots or uncover supposed fraud.

The DNC, meanwhile, does not involve itself with the training of poll workers or other volunteers at election sites, according to a spokesperson.

Despite the DNC’s lack of involvement in such issues, in January Mr McGavick once again characterised the effort as the party playing catchup after being barred from engaging in poll-watching training due to a court order stemming from a lawsuit the party settled in which it was accused, among other things, of hiring off-duty police officers to apparently intimidate minority voters in majority-black neighborhoods.

“The goal really is just transparency, bipartisan transparency,” Mr McGavick said earlier this year. “Democrats have been able to build out these programs in the past few decades. We have not. Now we’re just trying to get up to speed and make sure that the Republicans and Democrats have the opportunity to be trained to poll watch and ensure that elections are running in a free, fair, transparent way.”