The Republican National Committee and former President Donald Trump’s campaign announced a new initiative Friday to deploy thousands of people to monitor vote counts in battleground states during the presidential election.
The Republican Party aims to recruit 100,000 volunteers to observe the voting process and report irregularities, as well as lawyers to provide rapid response services if there are problems during the vote count.
“The RNC is hiring hundreds of election integrity staffers across the map – more than ever before, as our party will hire thousands more observers to protect the vote in 2024,” said Lara Trump, co-chair of the RNC. RNC, in a press release. “These state campaign managers are responsible for recruiting, training and, when possible, moving observers and poll workers day in and day out.”
The operation plans to set up an “election integrity hotline” in each battleground state and create a command center for lawyers to respond to volunteer reports.
Monthly training sessions on monitoring polling sites and vote counting centers will also be organized, according to the press release.
The Trump campaign and the RNC are calling it “the largest and most monumental election integrity program in the nation’s history.”
Every jurisdiction in the country allows people to observe, but not interfere, with the voting and counting process, says David Becker, a CBS News contributor to election law and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.
Becker doubts that Republicans will be able to attract as many volunteers as expected for the effort. “Election transparency is a good thing,” Becker said. “But I can’t remember a single recent presidential election where there weren’t promises to recruit an army of thousands of poll observers, and those never came to fruition.”
The program was designed by the Trump campaign, along with newly installed RNC Chairman Michael Whatley, Lara Trump and RNC Chief Counsel Charlie Spies. Before Trump chose him to chair the RNC, Whatley worked on election integrity initiatives as chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party.
His history with these efforts was one motivator for Trump when he chose him to succeed Ronna McDaniel as party president.
The announcement highlights the former president’s efforts to refocus the RNC on election integrity, something Trump felt previous party leaders failed to achieve in the 2020 election.
Despite Trump’s attention to this issue, there has been no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Trump is currently facing federal and state charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election .
The Democratic National Committee has accused Trump’s political operation of trying to undermine the results of the 2024 presidential election.
“Donald Trump knows he is running a losing campaign, which is why he is working with his hand-picked team of election deniers at the RNC to once again lay the groundwork to undermine our democracy and spread baseless lies about a rigged election,” said Alex Floyd, the DNC’s rapid response director. in a press release.
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