The 2020 presidential election was marred by irregularities, insecure election practices, and last-minute rule changes that, as election integrity activists have since pointed out, benefitted Democrat Joe Biden. As The Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway put it in her bestseller, the election was “Rigged.”
But four years later, President-elect Donald Trump won in a landslide in part because Republicans and conservatives mobilized like never before to build a massive election integrity network focused on ensuring free and fair elections.
Take 2020 for example. Republican observers “were either kept out, or allowed inside but kept too far away from the counting to see what was happening” at the Philadelphia Convention Center, as explained by my colleague Beth Brelje.
But following reports on Tuesday that Republican poll watchers were being “turned away” in Philadelphia, York, Westmoreland, Allegheny, Lehigh, Cambria, Wyoming, and Lackawanna counties, the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) was on top of it.
RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said in a post on X that the committee “deployed our roving attorneys, engaged with local officials, and can now report that all Republican poll watchers have been let into the building.”
Similar action was taken in Milwaukee after the “Milwaukee Elections Commission announced over the weekend that certain voting precincts may be limited to only one Republican and one Democrat poll watcher on Election Day,” as the RNC wrote in a Monday statement. The RNC noted that the city’s elections commission “not disclosed which precincts” would be affected. The RNC filed suit, and Milwaukee responded by affirming that “it will respect the public’s right to access and observe the election process in accordance with the law,” the RNC announced in a follow-up statement.
On Tuesday, Republican poll watchers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin noticed something amiss. A poll watcher told The Federalist’s Matt Kittle that when the day began, the tabulator machines inspected by observers had been sealed.
“Later one of our observers noticed that the seals (on the machines) had been broken,” the source told Kittle. That means the machines “had effectively been unlocked, presenting a potential integrity breach,” Kittle explained, citing the observer. Roughly a dozen machines were compromised, sources said. RNC Co-Chair Lara Trump said on Tuesday that their legal team was aware of “unsecured” counting “conditions” in Milwaukee and that the RNC was “unambiguously calling on Milwaukee’s officials to do their jobs and count ballots quickly and effectively.”
Approximately 31,000 absentee ballots that were counted were slated to be recounted after the security problem, as Kittle reported.
But it wasn’t just the RNC that helped counter Democrats’ shenanigans with election integrity efforts.
Wisconsin’s “most notorious elections clerk” who “repeatedly failed to follow election integrity laws” was ordered to comply months after the Public Interest Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit, as Kittle also reported. The suit alleged Green Bay Clerk Celestine Jeffreys “did not comply with procedures for auditing voters who registered to vote on Election Day” at their designated polling places for the past four years, Kittle wrote. The state election commission sent Jeffreys a letter late last week ordering her to certify after the election that she completed the necessary steps as required by the law and “Commission guidelines” regarding Election Day registration.
Election integrity has been an ongoing focus nationwide in the years and months leading up to the 2024 election. Just last year, Carol Snow (who is affiliated with the North Carolina Audit Force group), alerted the North Carolina State Board of Elections that the state’s voter registration form did not make it clear to applicants that they were required to submit their driver’s license identification number or the last four digits of their Social Security number, as The Federalist previously reported. The form only highlighted in red “required” fields like name, address, and date of birth.
The board acknowledged the form lacked clear instructions and, as NCSBE Public Information Director Patrick Gannon previously told The Federalist, unanimously agreed to update the form to make clear that registrants must provide either their driver’s license identification or the last four digits of their Social Security number.
Conservatives and election integrity advocates have also been working in the months leading up to Election Day to hold election officials accountable when it comes to maintaining clean voter rolls and ensuring only eligible citizens participate in U.S. elections. For example, in September, conservative group America First Legal lodged lawsuits on behalf of the Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona and resident Yvonne Cahill against 15 county election recorders in Arizona for allegedly failing “to take the actions required by law to ensure that foreign citizens are removed from their voter rolls,” as The Federalist has reported.