With Election Day in sight, the Republican Party is busily laying the groundwork for the next “Big Lie.” After four years of perpetuating the falsehood that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, the Republican National Committee has filed more than 100 lawsuits in dozens of states that aim to purge voter rolls, restrict mail-in ballots and make it generally harder for people to vote. While these lawsuits have mostly failed in the courts, they have set the stage for a barrage of legal challenges if Trump loses. In swing states, meanwhile, the RNC is in the midst of an ambitious plan to recruit and deploy more than 100,000 poll watchers on Election Day.
All of this activity represents a full return to form for the GOP. In 1982, the Republican National Committee was effectively barred from engaging in “ballot security programs” after signing a consent decree to settle a lawsuit alleging voter intimidation. The allegation stemmed from the party’s deployment of around 200 armed men — most of them off-duty police officers — to patrol polling places in minority neighborhoods during New Jersey’s 1981 gubernatorial election. When the consent decree expired in 2018, Trump was already leading the GOP down the path of election denialism. Two years later, the newly liberated RNC recruited and trained roughly 50,000 volunteers to serve as “poll watchers” who were deployed across battleground states — particularly to urban precincts with large minority populations. For months leading up to the 2020 election, they were told by the president himself to watch for “all the thieving and stealing and robbing” that was bound to happen in places like Detroit and Philadelphia. Predictably, a deluge of spurious claims of fraud came flooding in on Election Day, which Trump used to dispute the outcome.
The RNC is in the midst of an ambitious plan to recruit and deploy more than 100,000 poll watchers on Election Day.
The initial legal effort to overturn the 2020 election was based on the cascade of allegations made by Republican poll watchers. In Michigan, Trump’s lawyers put together 238 pages of signed affidavits from poll watchers in the state in an attempt to block the certification of the vote. These affidavits contained virtually no real evidence of fraud, but were replete with hearsay and complaints about everything from the PA system to “rude behavior” and “unpleasant looks” from poll workers.
This new generation of poll watchers also fueled conspiracy theories on social media. One of the most circulated videos claiming to expose fraud, for example, was taken by the volunteer observer Kellye SoRelle, who recorded a man at Detroit’s TCF Center removing a box from a van and placing it in a red wagon. Right-wing outlets quickly picked up the video and alleged that the box contained additional ballots being brought into a tabulation center after the polls had already closed. In reality, the man was a photographer for a local news station and the box contained his camera equipment. Incidents like these were not bugs but features of the Republican Party’s ballot monitoring program, designed to instill doubt in the election results.
In 2024, the RNC is tripling down on its “election integrity” efforts. After the Trump campaign took control of the national committee last March, its new leadership (including the former president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump) quickly unveiled the scheme to recruit more than 100,000 volunteer poll watchers. Among those tapped to lead this effort was the notorious election denier Christina Bobb, who has been indicted in Arizona for her role in the state’s “fake electors” scheme. These recruiting efforts have apparently gone well: RNC chairman Michael Whatley and Lara Trump recently announced that they have recruited more than twice as many volunteers as initially planned. All told, this year’s election could see around four times as many Republican volunteers flocking to polling sites across the country.
Trump, meanwhile, has been on the campaign trail claiming that Republicans have “all the votes we need” and can only lose due to Democratic cheating. “Without voter fraud, we win so easily,” he declared last month in a speech delivered to the nation’s largest police association, the Fraternal Order of Police, where he implored the crowd of police officers to “watch for voter fraud” on Election Day.
In their training seminars, RNC officials are careful to avoid inflammatory rhetoric that could land the party in legal trouble. Training sessions run less than an hour and go over the different rules for poll watchers in each state, providing “Election Integrity Hotlines” for volunteers to call in case of any questions or reports of possible fraud. Yet the RNC has also welcomed guest speakers who represent the most extreme fringes of the American right, such as far-right conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec, who last month spoke to a group of volunteer poll watchers in Michigan, where he described them as the “final line of defense against the encroaching Marxism.”
This year’s election could see around four times as many Republican volunteers flocking to polling sites across the country.
Earlier this month, Trump’s running mate JD Vance made a guest appearance on an RNC webinar for “national poll watcher week,” during which he praised the RNC for putting together “the biggest election integrity event from our party or maybe any party over the last 20 or 30y years.” Vance has generally evaded questions about whether Trump lost the election in 2020 and is careful to avoid outright election denialism in his comments to poll watchers. But he has echoed Trump’s claims that the Trump-Vance ticket can only lose next month if the Democrats successfully cheat in battleground states like Pennsylvania. Repeating the “too big to rig” slogan that implies a large number of Democratic votes are either fake or illegal, the Ohio senator said, “We know…we’re up against a very effective [Democratic Party] machine, but the way to beat that machine is to overwhelm it.” The closer the election, the more likely it is that “Democratic shenanigans” will be successful, said Vance, who praised the poll watchers as “the biggest team that we’ve ever seen in this country to secure our elections.”
During the same session, RNC chairman Michael Whatley promoted the RNC’s election integrity program as an effort to restore confidence in American elections, saying, “We think it’s very important for every Republican voter to have confidence in this system.” In reality, the Republican Party’s ongoing efforts will only further erode confidence and make elections less secure and more dangerous. This is particularly true for election workers who have faced increasing threats of violence and harassment since 2020, driving a record number to quit out of fear for their safety. Across the country, election officials have been ramping up security measures such as equipping poll workers with panic buttons and installing bulletproof glass and surveillance cameras. Some offices have even stocked up on the anti-overdose medicine Narcan after envelopes containing fentanyl were mailed to several election offices last year.
The Republican army of election deniers expected to swarm polling sites will dramatically increase the danger of intimidation and harassment at the polls, but will do little to restore faith in the electoral system should Trump lose. For a growing number of Republicans, the only thing that can restore their confidence in the electoral system is victory. Whatever the final electoral vote tally in November, Trump will almost certainly declare himself the winner. What happens next is anyone’s guess.
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