The Right-Wing Plan to Recruit Poll Workers in Swing States — ProPublica

Right-wing strategists still talk about what happened in Detroit in 2020, when poll watchers stood outside the absentee ballot counting center, banging on windows and shouting “Stop the count!” Conspiracy theories swirled that those volunteers had been kept out while something corrupt was unfolding inside. In fact, at one point the facility held almost double the number of permitted poll watchers of both parties.

But the theories continue spreading four years later. “They kick people out that are observers, and they put cardboard over the window, and you’re supposed to trust what’s going on behind the cardboard?” Lance Wallnau, a leading Christian right influencer, said at an Arizona tent revival in April.

Ahead of the 2024 election, activists have taken steps to get closer to the action. A coalition of activists on the political right, many of whom have promoted false claims about election fraud, is recruiting poll workers to administer the process themselves rather than watching from the outside. The groups are urging people to work at their local polling stations and to report perceived irregularities to those groups’ external hotlines — something that could risk violating the law.

“Poll watcher is the person where you get kicked out if chicanery happens,” Mercedes Sparks, who works for Wallnau, said at the same tent revival, explaining the recruitment initiative. “If you’re a poll worker, you’re the one doing the chicanery, so you can lock the door. You can kick everybody out.”

Sparks said by email that her remarks were a “lighthearted joke,” and that she and Wallnau “make it clear that everyone must follow election laws.” Wallnau did not respond to multiple calls, emails or a list of detailed questions.

The politicized effort to recruit poll workers is concentrated in at least six swing states. ProPublica and Wisconsin Watch reviewed dozens of hours of trainings and presentations, some closed to the press, in which activists discussed their plans.

Activists, including Wallnau, have told recruits they can be a “spy in the camp” or “Trojan horse” on Election Day. But while elections officials in more than a dozen swing-state counties said safeguards are in place to prevent interference, they and elections experts warned of a bigger threat: delegitimizing the process. If poll workers report their experiences to groups with a history of spreading false claims about election fraud, they may help further distrust in the system and results.

“I would be concerned about a repository of alleged fraud like that being used as fodder for misinformation,” said Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy and partnerships at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. “If it’s used to perpetuate conspiracy theories and false narratives about our election system, I think you could end up doing a lot of harm.”

The Republican and Democratic parties have historically recruited poll workers, and almost every state legally requires some amount of partisan balance. Ahead of 2024, Republicans have accused officials in five Michigan and Wisconsin cities of unfairly overlooking their nominees and overstaffing polling places with Democrats. The challenges in Flint, Michigan, and Madison, Wisconsin, were dismissed (one by a court, the other by the Wisconsin Elections Commission), and Republican applicants in some places have since filed the required paperwork and signed up; other challenges are ongoing.

What’s newer is groups outside the parties making concerted efforts to recruit poll workers themselves. The Election Integrity Network, founded by Cleta Mitchell, a former lawyer for ex-President Donald Trump, began enlisting poll workers during the 2022 midterms. Now, more groups have joined it. These include True the Vote, whose claims formed the basis of the widely debunked and eventually retracted film “2000 Mules,” which claimed to show election fraud, and The Lion of Judah, a group aspiring to be the “Christian version of the NRA” that is traveling to swing states with Wallnau to recruit conservative Christian poll workers.

Late last month, Trump’s vice presidential nominee, JD Vance, lent Wallnau’s efforts credibility by appearing at a tour stop in Pennsylvania.

It is unknown how many poll workers these groups have recruited, in part because they aren’t saying and in part because election offices don’t ask people about their motivation.

“You have a clear admission publicly of what the game is, that they fundamentally assume that our election systems are corrupt, and so they believe that it is their job to corrupt them in their own direction,” Matthew Taylor, a scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies, said of Sparks’ remarks.

Taylor, whose new book documents the role of Christian right leaders like Wallnau in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, said the “propaganda value” of having someone inside the voting system, who “presents quote unquote evidence of election fraud that does not stand up in court, that is completely debunked later on,” is still enormous and bad for democracy.

“Stand Up. We’re Going to Induct You.”

Historically, campaigns, parties and advocacy groups have enlisted volunteer poll watchers to observe the process and flag concerns. In 2020, hundreds swarmed ballot-counting centers in states where the vote was close. On social media and in unsuccessful lawsuits, Trump claimed Republican poll watchers had witnessed fraud or were denied the chance to observe, fueling conspiracy theories that the contest had been stolen from him.

But poll watchers can only look and, in some states, raise challenges. Poll workers, on the other hand, are paid to help to physically administer the election. As temporary government employees, they may register voters, check identification, issue ballots and assist with equipment. In Georgia and Arizona this year, they’ll also help hand-count ballots or the envelopes for absentee ballots returned on Election Day.

That direct access to the voting is exactly what the activists are promising. In May, Wallnau brought his Courage Tour to a massive white tent an hour outside Detroit. He moved among the crowd, clasping his arms around believers as they swayed together to worship music. Later that day, he summoned them to their feet as he issued a holy assignment: to serve as poll workers.

“Who here is bothered about the election integrity issue?” Wallnau asked. “Who is interested in obeying God, election integrity and getting paid to do it? All right, stand up. We’re going to induct you.”

Dozens in the crowd stood, heads bowed and arms raised.

“I pray for an anointing. Angels will go with them, and they’ll expose the hidden works of darkness,” Wallnau said. “They’ll be led to discover whatever nefarious things are being done by the darkness.”

Wallnau did similar recruiting in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, directing attendees to Lion of Judah. The organization, which features Trump prominently on its website, offers a free course titled “Fight the Fraud,” with modules detailing poll workers’ basic duties and helping people find their local elections offices so they can apply as well as email templates to streamline the process. It tells students that “election workers matter now more than ever” because the “threat of election fraud is a serious concern” and “what happened in 2020 can never happen again!”

At a Wallnau event outside Pittsburgh last month, Greg Pontinen of Murrysville, Pennsylvania, said he decided to register as a poll worker after speaking with an activist soliciting support for administering elections by hand-counting paper ballots.

“It just seems like there’s a lot of controversy, and there’s a lot of people that have been in a lot of anguish over the last election, of improprieties and rigged elections,” he said. “I think if you have oversight on that, you have less chance of that, and I think that’s a firsthand chance for me to actually watch for that.”

Although Lion of Judah’s course notes that poll workers “must be impartial and follow strict guidelines to maintain the integrity of the electoral process,” it also instructs workers who “encounter any type of voter fraud” to email their hotline with “any proof if available.” Joshua Standifer, founder of Lion of Judah, has referred to his strategy as a “Trojan Horse.” On stage in Michigan, he agreed as Wallnau told the crowd: “When they kick everyone else out, you’re the spy in the camp.”

Standifer said in an interview that by “Trojan Horse,” he means his program is a way to place principled Christians where they might not otherwise be. And he described the hotline as a tool to reassure whistleblowers that they’re “safe” and supported, as well as to ensure problems get “dealt with either officially or in the court of public opinion.”

But state laws often detail a strict chain of command poll workers must follow on Election Day, including when they encounter possible issues, and prohibit the sharing of private voter information. By reporting information outside the polling place, elections workers risk violating their oaths of office or even state law, said Lauren Miller Karalunas, an attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice who has reviewed poll worker statutes in 11 swing states.

“Our objective is to encourage Christians to engage peacefully, ethically, and legally within the system,” Standifer said by email. “Any suggestion that we are encouraging inappropriate behavior is simply false and part of an ongoing effort to discourage Christians from participating in civic processes.”

Like Lion of Judah, True the Vote has established a repository to receive complaints and concerns from poll workers on Election Day: an app called VoteAlert. The platform asks users to submit information and to specify if they are poll workers, because “it helps us to better anticipate a way in which to potentially support or find resources for you, if you’re serving,” founder Catherine Engelbrecht said during a virtual training in September. The app includes a disclaimer that users agree to follow federal and state laws limiting the ability to record in polling places.

She said her team vets every report before posting it on its platform. However, the public feed included a report that a polling place in Delaware held a bake sale enticing people to vote for certain candidates, which would be illegal. The post contained a photograph that a reverse image search revealed was at least seven years old.

Engelbrecht said she would review details about the bake sale report but otherwise declined to comment. The organization said by email the post “was part of our beta testing period” before its app launched. After the ProPublica-Wisconsin Watch inquiry, the group removed the post.

Many of those recruiting poll workers have connections to Trump or his allies. Lion of Judah’s most recent Tennessee annual corporation filing, obtained through a public records request, was submitted by Miles Terry, an attorney whose law firm partner represented Trump in his first impeachment proceeding. Terry did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment.

Mitchell, who leads Election Integrity Network, served on Trump’s legal team during his attempts to overturn the 2020 election result. Since 2022, EIN has promoted becoming a poll worker, directing people to “become part of the election apparatus” in their communities. EIN affiliates in Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin have made efforts to recruit and train poll workers in 2024. Mitchell and another EIN leader did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment.

During a June livestream on the video-sharing platform Rumble, former Trump Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli directed an audience of about 10,000 to EIN’s website to sign up as poll workers. What “can make the most difference without changing the laws,” Cuccinelli said, “is getting more of our folks inside the polling places, not as poll watchers, but as election officials, the ones who actually sign people in in the poll books, the ones who actually count the ballots.” Reached by phone, Cuccinelli said he takes every opportunity to encourage people to become poll workers and often refers them to EIN for training.

His remarks came during regular “election security” livestreams hosted on Rumble by Florida businessman and local Republican Party leader Steve Stern. Stern declined an interview.

In April, Christina Norton, director of election integrity for the Republican National Committee, told the livestream audience that its poll watchers and workers were the “heart of this mission.” When they encounter problems on Election Day, Norton said, they should “immediately report that issue back to the Republican headquarters, back to our war rooms, and then we are able to answer, mitigate or escalate these problems to resolve them in real time.” An RNC spokesperson said Norton meant that only observers should contact the war room but did not respond to requests for clarification and whether the request asked workers to break the law.

The Worry Is Not Disruption but Distrust

Poll worker recruits could try to disrupt the process by challenging voters’ eligibility to cast ballots. There have been isolated instances of more extreme interference. In June, an Arizona election worker was charged with stealing a magnetic security key to a vote-tabulating machine, and, in 2022, a Michigan worker was charged with copying voter information onto a personal flash drive. The Arizona worker is awaiting trial, while the Michigan worker’s case was dismissed, though the dismissal is being appealed.

But elections officials across the country said there are a number of provisions to prevent poll workers from interfering with voting and ballot counting.

Zach Manifold, elections supervisor in Gwinnett County, Georgia, outside Atlanta, explained that poll workers must receive official training and swear an oath of office — procedures statutorily required in most states — and can be dismissed for impropriety at any time.

“I always tell people, if you’re skeptical of the process, you should be a poll official, because — spoiler alert for them — it’s a really tough job, a really long day, and they work really hard, and there’s a lot of safeguards in place,” Manifold said.

Temporary workers, for instance, are often assigned to work on teams of at least two. And there are detailed processes for documenting who touched vote-related material and when. Administrators also try to pair new workers with experienced ones and strive to staff members of both parties at the polls.

“During our training, that is a pretty big point that we hit home is that when you are an election worker, you are nonpartisan,” said George Guthrie of the Washoe County Registrar of Voters in Nevada. “You’re there to essentially do a job, and that job is to make sure people have the opportunity to vote.”

Some administrators also noted that they and their staff will be vigilant for workers with ulterior motives. “If you’re going there to disrupt, it’s going to be obvious very quickly, and you’re going to be removed, and if it’s something that’s criminal, you’re going to be prosecuted,” said Jerry Holland, supervisor of elections in Duval County, Florida, home to Jacksonville.

Despite Election Day safeguards, some groups also suggest that they could use poll worker testimony in lawsuits challenging the electoral process. United Sovereign Americans, a group that claims to have identified widespread voter fraud, has shared such a plan on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast.

“We’re not saying, like, hey, maybe we’ll file a lawsuit down the road,” founder Marly Hornik said on the show. “We’re saying we already have attorneys writing these lawsuits. What we need is your reports to fill in as those are going to constitute the exhibits.”

In an interview, Hornik said her group is nonpartisan and insisted it is not seeking to disrupt the election. But it is planning to request injunctions stopping the certification of election results in some states.

“We’re not disrupting the election,” she said. “The officials who are supposed to run a legitimate process are refusing to do so.”

Attorneys at the Institute for Responsive Government and the Brennan Center said these efforts will likely fail. The Brennan Center has filed an amicus brief in opposition to a United Sovereign Americans’ lawsuit in Maryland; that suit has been dismissed and the group is appealing.

Beyond the courts, elections administrators and experts point to the broader risks of introducing misconceptions or falsehoods in the court of public opinion.

David Levine, an elections administration consultant, has studied how Trump and others have taken advantage of human errors in service of election fraud narratives, leading to threats and harassment. That warning was borne out both by Special Counsel Jack Smith and a congressional investigation, which have laid the blame for the Capitol violence with the falsehoods spread by Trump and his team.

“Perhaps the most troublesome aspect of this is that when you tell people that there could be fraud around every corner, you certainly can trigger them,” Levine said. “If people who are recruited and receptive to these claims become election workers, and their preferred candidate, or candidates, do not win, they can become very angry, and, as we saw in 2020, take matters into their own hands.”