The Republican party is building a grassroots “army” to target and potentially overturn election results in Democratic precincts, the Politico website reported on Wednesday, citing video evidence.
The alleged scheme includes installing party-trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic-majority polling places, creating a website to put these workers in touch with local lawyers and establishing a network of district attorneys who could intervene to block vote counts.
Many Republicans still believe Donald Trump’s lie that he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden because of widespread voter fraud. At state level the party has passed laws that make it harder to vote while pro-Trump candidates are running for positions that would give them control over future elections.
Politico obtained a series of recordings of Republican meetings between the summer of 2021 and May this year.
It said one from November shows Matthew Seifried, the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) election integrity director for Michigan, urging party activists in Wayne county to obtain official designations as poll workers.
Seifried says: “Being a poll worker, you just have so many more rights and things you can do to stop something than [as] a poll challenger.”
Some of the would-be poll workers complain that fraud was committed in 2020 and that the election was “corrupt”.
At another training session last October, Seifried promises support for such workers: “It’s going to be an army. 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?”
Politico also obtained Zoom tapings of Tim Griffin, legal counsel to the Amistad Project, a self-described election integrity group that Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani once portrayed as a “partner” in the Trump campaign’s legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Griffin is seen meeting with activists from multiple states and discussing plans for identifying friendly district attorneys who could stage interventions in local election disputes.
He says during one meeting in September: “Remember, guys, we’re trying to build out a nationwide district attorney network. Your local district attorney, as we always say, is more powerful than your congressman.
“They’re the ones that can seat a grand jury. They’re the ones that can start an investigation, issue subpoenas, make sure that records are retained, etc.”
Politico added that installing party loyalists on the board of canvassers, which is responsible for certifying election results, also appears to be part of the Republican strategy.
The revelations are sure to intensify concerns about fresh assaults on American democracy in 2022 and 2024.
Nick Penniman, founder and chief executive of Issue One, an election watchdog group, told Politico: “This is completely unprecedented in the history of American elections – that a political party would be working at this granular level to put a network together. It looks like now the Trump forces are going directly after the legal system itself, and that should concern everyone.”
The RNC insisted that it is simply trying to restore balance to election oversight in heavily Democratic cities such as Detroit. Gates McGavick, an RNC spokesperson, was quoted as saying: “Democrats have had a monopoly on poll watching for 40 years, and it speaks volumes that they’re terrified of an even playing field.
“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.”
