The Donald Trump campaign, Republican National Committee and Republican Party of Virginia have recruited and certified in the area of 5,000 poll watchers and have 500 attorneys manning an election-law help desk.
The end goal, according to one person who went through a GOP training session in a Northern Virginia county, is to create a trail of reports that Gov. Glenn Youngkin can use as the basis for claiming election fraud that would justify him not certifying the Commonwealth’s election results, leaving Virginia’s 13 electoral votes, which are almost certainly set to go to the Democratic Party nominee, Kamala Harris, off the table.
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“I somehow was recruited this election cycle to be a GOP Protect the Vote ‘election integrity’ poll watcher,” our insider told me by email, before sharing with me recordings of several of the training sessions that the insider took part in, which included remarks from Youngkin, U.S. Senate nominee Hung Cao, and hours of training in the minutiae of what goes on at polling precincts during early voting and on Election Day.
The trainings that we were able to listen to were led by John Walczyk, an RNC plant with the title of Virginia director of election integrity, whose general message to those who signed up was, “treat it like it’s a job.”
“Be sure to arrive early. Plan accordingly for the day. If you need, you know, snacks for when you’re working, if you take medication that you need to bring with you, all of those types of things, please just make sure to plan it ahead. And of course, don’t lose your form so we have a troubleshooting protocol,” Walczyk said in a virtual training in mid-August.
Poll watchers are split into two shifts, one beginning in the 5 a.m. hour and running into the early afternoon, the second starting in the early afternoon and running up until the polls close at 7 p.m., and then remaining on-site until election officers are done wrapping up the day, which at some locations can run past 9 p.m. during early voting, and could stretch much later on Election Night.
Walczyk encouraged those who signed up for the training to consider also becoming local election officers, which he called “the first line of defense” – “because they are an appointed position, because they are paid, and they are the folks who are actually administering the election.”
“They give us a little bit more leverage and autonomy over changes being made at the polling locations,” Walczyk said in the August training session.
The emphasis for both poll watchers and election officers is on the reports, which are to be filed after each shift.
“You should know the process and observe. Again, you’re going to know exactly how the process should run,” Walczyk said. “By the end of this training, you want to be observing what’s happening, and any anomalies in that process, whatever variation they may be, that’s what you’re ultimately going to be reporting to us. Use that hotline in the reporting form, right.”
The training was pretty straightforward in that respect – over and over, it was stressed to the wannabe poll workers and election officials that they were signing up to be the eyes and ears of the GOP, and to respect the process.
“Some things you should never do as a poll watcher – never be disrespectful to anyone at the polling location, never present yourself in a demanding fashion to anyone at the polling location. You should never interfere or disrupt voting or the orderly conduct of the election. You should, under no circumstances, commit defamation or make unsubstantiated accusations, and you should never violate any laws or anyone’s voter rights,” Walcyzk told the trainees.
Basically, lay low, make sure nothing untoward is happening, and fill out the report at the end of your shift.
The questions from those who signed up reflected what you’d expect from people who have been told for the past several years that Democrats are signing up illegal immigrants, creating fake voter profiles out of the thin air, and stuffing the ballot box with votes on USB drives.
“I do want you to know that there is always a potential for something wonky to take place,” said Diane Cullo, a well-connected Northern Virginia Republican whose resume includes service in the George W. Bush and Donald Trump administrations. “You hear something every single day. I am not a conspiracy theorist, but the more individuals and the more people who have their eyes on the technical and the human potential for getting involved and interfering in our elections, the better we will be to prevent the bad stuff from happening.”
The general thrust of the trainings seemed to be, we know that none of the stuff that our side has been saying publicly is going on in elections is actually going on.
We had this, for instance, from Youngkin on a Sept. 5 training call:
“I just want to be clear, we have 100 percent paper ballots in Virginia, and then we have counting machines, not voting machines, and as a result, they’re not hooked up to the internet. And there is a box of paper ballots that goes every day with every counting machine, and that gives us the ability to affirm every day and confirm every day that the number of people who have voted corresponds to the number of ballots in the box. That’s what happens, and that’s a really important check. Drop boxes are secured or monitored 24/7, and I am requiring all registrars and election officials to, in fact, certify back to me that that is the case, so that we don’t have the worries about massive drops and drop boxes that are that are unattended or in the wee hours of the morning.
“There are no massive mailings of ballots in Virginia. You have to request one to get one or already be on the absentee ballot list, and then for your ballot to come back and count, your last four digits of your Social Security number have to be on it, and it has to match to someone on the voter list. And this process, if it doesn’t match, then it goes into a provisionary provisional ballot box. It’s not counted until the board of elections has a chance or regional or regional board has a chance to confirm that that ballot is appropriate.
“That whole process is incredibly important. I know that tonight, the team will talk about lots of aspects of your training, but one of the main things that I’ve done is require the certification back that all of those processes are being followed and that the chain of custody of ballots, and of course, the trust that those processes engender is well understood and transparent.”
Against this backdrop, with the governor saying as to the actual potential for election shenanigans, please disperse, nothing to see here, we have, here in Waynesboro, our home base here at Augusta Free Press, a lawsuit filed by the two Republican members of the city electoral board who claim that “certifying the 2024 election would be a violation of the Virginia Constitution,” because they can’t “certify that votes have been counted and apportioned correctly by the voting machines,” and they “cannot ensure that the machines do not connect to the Internet, allowing for vote counting algorithm manipulation.”
ICYMI: Waynesboro Republicans don’t want to certify the Nov. 5 results
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- Waynesboro voters seek court order requiring Nov. 5 vote certification
- Waynesboro Republicans who don’t want to certify Nov. 5 election were … recruited?
- Gov. Youngkin, AG Miyares mum on Waynesboro lawsuit challenging Nov. 5 vote count
The impact of this suit, were the two Republicans to be successful in getting a judge to side with them on their request to be able to lead a hand-count of the votes cast in Waynesboro, would extend beyond Waynesboro – forcing hand-counts across the Commonwealth, which could delay the certification of votes at the local level, and funnel up to delaying the final certification by Youngkin.
That’s one way Republicans are trying to gum up the works. The stack of poll watcher reports being generated during early voting and concluding on Election Day, which could end up numbering in the 10,000 range, filed by people who are convinced they’re going to see illegal immigrants and George Soros-funded operatives during their shifts, is another way to get at this.
Internally, Republicans are telling their own volunteers that the elections are secure, but the public rhetoric, to the point that Trump still can’t even commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election, if his side loses, and the pre-emptive lawsuit that we’re dealing with in Waynesboro, not only tells a different story, but suggests something more nefarious – that they’re not so much focused on actually winning the election, but rather, on making sure that Kamala Harris can’t get to 270 electoral votes, no matter how many votes she gets, and how many states she wins.
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Chris Graham
