BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. — National Republicans kicked off their in-person recruiting efforts in the crucial battleground state of Michigan on Friday as part of their broader effort to build up an Election Day army of 100,000 poll workers and monitors intended to combat the infrequent problem of voter fraud.
National GOP officials including Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley and co-chair Lara Trump, as well as state and local party officials, drummed up enthusiasm for the party’s aspirational “Protect the Vote” program at the small Oakland County GOP office, about 30 miles northwest of downtown Detroit.
The event was the first of several organized by the RNC to begin more publicly rolling out its recruitment efforts to staff up the massive election integrity project it announced in April that seeks to deploy 100,000 volunteers and attorneys — predominantly in seven swing states — to monitor the vote.
In front of a crowd of about 100 people, Whatley and Trump emphasized their focus on the problem of voter fraud, which is exceptionally rare, and pressed attendees to consider volunteering for the effort in Michigan.
“If we have a free, fair and transparent election, there is no question that when the votes are counted, we’re going to bed early on Nov. 5. We’re going to wrap this up so that everybody gets a good night’s sleep and will go to bed knowing that Donald Trump is our next president,” said Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law.
She added that she and Whatley “have two jobs at the RNC: get out the vote and protect the ballot.”
“And that’s where you guys come in,” Trump said to applause.
Whatley said the ramped-up public recruiting effort revolved around two concepts: observation and publicity.
“You have to be in the room when people are voting” and “you've got to be in the room when the votes are being counted,” he said.
“It is not an election denier conspiracy theory to say that you should be in the room and you should make sure that these things are being done fairly,” Whatley said.
He added that it was equally important that “we need to make sure we are talking about” the broader topic of election integrity frequently.
Amid a yearslong drumbeat of false accusations from Donald Trump regarding the 2020 election, the RNC in April announced plans to assemble a 100,000-person force to fight the widespread voter fraud they insist is occurring. (There is no evidence widespread voter fraud occurred during the 2020 race, and election officials have repeatedly said votes were secure in the contest.)
But Republican Party officials had largely provided few details on the plans, while critics have said that the intended size and scope of the effort is overly aspirational. And until Friday, recruitment efforts had been directed almost entirely through the RNC-run website Protectthevote.com.
Event organizers with the national and Michigan Republican parties continued to provide scant specifics on their success recruiting and did not allow the media to observe the training session Friday. Attendees of the session described it as thin on details and not unlike prior guidance local party officials have provided on how to best perform the duties of a poll watcher or poll monitor.
Still, attendees also expressed ardent enthusiasm about the GOP’s attention to the issue of election integrity, with many listing it as one of three issues they care most about heading into the election.
“Election integrity is crucial,” said Chris Meister, a 67-year-old retiree.
“We should all care about every vote being accurately counted,” he said, adding that “quite frankly, the system in Michigan is completely void of any sort of checks and balances to ensure integrity.”
He attended the training at Friday’s event, saying it mostly focused on how best to “raise and report” issues with election officials on the ground at the polls on Election Day.
Others in attendance repeated certain stories and theories popular among 2020 election skeptics about the vote-counting processes in Michigan four years ago.
Bill Tedesco, an 81-year-old substitute high school teacher, said he remained “extremely” concerned about voter fraud and said Trump “got cheated” in 2020 and was the actual victor in Michigan. He also discussed his views on what occurred at the TCF Center in Detroit — a vote-counting site on election night that descended into chaos after tensions erupted between vote-tabulators and Republican poll watchers. It emerged as the center of some lawsuits seeking to overturn the results in Michigan.
“In Detroit, at a certain point, they kicked out the poll watchers and put pizza boxes on the windows. You don’t do that if you want to be honest. There’s got to be a different way to monitor these elections,” he said.
Tedesco attended the training and said his big takeaway was that a poll monitor’s job was “to be the eyes and the ears.” He summarized what officials told attendees as: “Stay within the law” and “don’t be a jerk,” but that “if you detect something that appears to be out of line, say something.”
Other attendees shared that they were concerned about specific issues related to the vote — and were pleased the national and state parties had chosen the Midwestern battleground of Michigan as the venue to begin their public efforts, even if the training didn’t delve into detailed information.
“There’s way too many mail-in ballots in Michigan,” said Teresa Snider, a 60-year-old mortgage collector from Oakland County. “If you want to vote, you should be out there and do it,” she said, adding that mail-in ballots were acceptable for disabled people and senior citizens, but that “in general, they create too many problems.”
The Michigan event was touted as a formal kickoff to the party’s more specific plans to recruit volunteers and even train them in poll monitoring practices. The RNC has scheduled similar events in Pennsylvania and North Carolina next week, and in Georgia the following week. Officials said planning was underway to hold additional ones in other battleground states, including Wisconsin, in the coming weeks.
Biden won Michigan in 2020 by 2.8 percentage points, while Trump won it in 2016 by just 0.2 percentage points — fewer than 11,000 votes. The race is expected to be tight again this year.
In recent months, the RNC has amped up a broader focus on election integrity. After Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination in March, the party rolled out a series of lawsuits arguing the voter rolls in certain swing states were bloated. The RNC also staffed up with election lawyers before announcing in April its intent to deploy an army of supporters on Election Day to “protect the vote and ensure a big win” in November.
However, Democrats with experience working closely with voter protection efforts have argued that the RNC is exaggerating its work and said they were skeptical that Republicans could recruit that many people to monitor the polls for fraud.
Meanwhile, election officials, including in Michigan, said they understood the value of poll watchers, monitors and challengers — but emphasized the importance that they receive proper training and expressed concern about the RNC’s training sessions.
“They play a critical role in making sure there’s accountability in the Election Day operations. They play an important role in [being] a check and balance,” said Lisa Posthumus Lyons, who as the clerk of Kent County, in western Michigan, is the county’s top election official.
“The key,” said Posthumus Lyons, who is a Republican, “is making sure they are adequately trained and prepared, that they know their role and their responsibilities clearly, that they know the election laws and how they’re administered.”
