Is GOP election security about safeguarding votes or vigilantism?

Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee recently announced “the most extensive and monumental election integrity program in the nation’s history,” involving 100,000 “dedicated volunteers and attorneys across every battleground state.” The plan is to deploy election workers, poll watchers, challengers and “aggressive attorneys” to targeted areas in “an historic collaboration between the RNC, the Trump Campaign, and passionate grassroots coalitions who are deeply vested in fighting voter fraud.”

Should this be cause for alarm about potential disruptions of the 2024 elections? The answer is: It depends — on their actions and what others do to better ensure a credible process.

The New York Times reported in late April that the RNC effort will target Democratic districts, including cities and African-American neighborhoods. The reporters pointed to new RNC leadership driving this initiative, including Whatley, Norton, Co-chair Lara Trump and Christina Bobb, senior council for election integrity. Bobb is among the 18 people indicted April 24 on felony charges for her role in the Arizona scheme to undo Joe Biden’s election by presenting fraudulent presidential electors to Congress.

One concern about deploying election monitors who are both partisan and convinced that widespread fraud exists is that they may see things that are not there or interpret things incorrectly (like believing someone passing a ginger mint is really illegally passing a USB drive). Having lost more than 60 court challenges, when wrongly declaring the 2020 elections suffered widespread fraud, election deniers only doubled down. And, they have since concocted bogus theories and faulty evidence of voter registration fraud (a rising battle arena), mailed ballot fraud and conspiracy theories about “rigged” election technologies. And now they are falsely claiming that throngs of undocumented immigrants are pouring into the country to illegally vote for Biden. 

Needless to say, if such passionate grassroots volunteers are to be integral to the 100,000 strong effort, they will face a daunting challenge in developing accurate observations required for genuine election monitoring and reliable evidence required to back up legal cases. Given the flood of post-election challenges following the 2020 election and the breadth of 2024 cases already lodged, it is possible to see the risks of challenges based on flimsy evidence. We can only hope that rigorous training based on established principles and good practices will lead to accurate, constructive reports.

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