The Republican National Committee (RNC) is gearing up for next year’s presidential race with the launch of a new department dedicated solely to election integrity.
The new internal infrastructure will bring on year-round staff operating new technology designed to facilitate recruitment and litigation, according to a 35-page report shared exclusively with The Federalist.
“The RNC built a historic election integrity program in 2022: we put 80,000 volunteers on the ground, secured key legal victories, and learned how we can grow even stronger in the future,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told The Federalist. “As we prepare for 2024, the RNC will establish a full-time permanent Election Integrity Department that will combine our existing tools to build on our unprecedented progress.”
The report sent to RNC members Thursday details the party’s plans to transform the GOP’s election integrity efforts from pop-up operations into year-round initiatives that remain ongoing immediately after each election. Prior to 2021, the national Republican Party was restricted from engaging in electoral oversight, such as hiring poll watchers over a 1981 consent decree. That meant any initiatives designed to maintain integrity in American elections were patchwork efforts coordinated by independent campaigns with the support of the GOP congressional campaign committees. The decades-long order was lifted in 2018 after more than three decades, and the party officially resumed efforts on poll watching and voter fraud in the 2021-2022 election cycle.
“The need for the RNC to be the permanent and year-round home for the Republican [Election Integrity Operations] is glaringly obvious, and the party is fortunate that we now have that,” the report reads. “For the past two years, the RNC has worked tirelessly as a bridge among those groups with unprecedented cooperation.”
The RNC is now preparing to hire an army to the tune of “tens of thousands” of attorneys and poll watchers with an aggressive litigation strategy to ensure a free and fair election next year.
“Beginning with the successful 2021 operations in Virginia and New Jersey, the RNC established a multifaceted [Election Integrity Operations] program in partnership with the NRSC and NRCC that resulted in dozens of lawsuits,” wrote Ashley MacLeay and Art Wittich, who chaired the RNC committee behind the report.
The fallout from the 2020 election, wherein Democrats exploited lockdown-era protocols to radically expand unsupervised access to the ballot box, has led the GOP to prioritize election integrity as a pillar of the RNC’s 2024 campaign strategy.
Three years ago, Democrat operatives through Facebook’s Center for Tech and Civic Life took over the administration of elections and erected ballot boxes in liberal strongholds to gin up turnout. Mark Zuckerberg’s project gave more than $400 million to the effort, with only a small fraction of the “Zuckbucks” spent in areas won by President Donald Trump.
Other efforts by Democrats to rig the 2020 contest included turning election day into election season, with voters able to cast ballots weeks before November, absent of the typical safeguards that protect against fraud. All happened while Big Tech conspired with the corporate press and even federal intelligence agencies to manipulate public opinion throughout the process.
While Republicans are limited with what they can do to confront the corporate collusion, the new RNC department marks an effort to master the mechanics of modern elections. The GOP is also planning to jump in the ballot harvesting game in states with loose restrictions. The party largely refrained from participating in the mass collection of ballots three years ago to the detriment of Republican candidates who faced Democrat opponents eager to exploit relaxed protocols.
Last fall, the RNC took a two-pronged approach to ballot harvesting: GOP attorneys fought to ban the practice in states such as Arizona, where attorneys were successful, while party workers took advantage of harvesting in states where efforts failed to rein in the rules.
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“The RNC ballot harvested where the law allowed it in 2022, helping to secure key congressional wins that flipped the House,” McDaniel told The Federalist. “We will build on and expand those efforts in 2024 where legal while still holding Democrats accountable for bad laws that undermine election integrity.”