With unaddressed allegations of fraud dominating the months following the 2020 presidential election, Republicans made election integrity a major focus on Tuesday night. The Republican National Committee (RNC) and its team of lawyers were quick to respond to potential hijinks last night, while voters followed up with a resounding push for ballot integrity in 9 states. 

When election officials in Milwaukee, Wisconsin announced that they had to “re-tabulate” an estimated 30,000 ballots, RNC co-chair Lara Trump told the American public that “the counting took place in unsecured conditions and the city now has to start over, wildly extending the counting timeline.” She explained, “This is an unacceptable example of incompetent election administration in a key swing state: voters deserve better and we are unambiguously calling on Milwaukee’s officials to DO THEIR JOBS and count ballots quickly and effectively. Anything less undermines voter confidence.”

Throughout the night, the RNC ensured that American voters’ election integrity concerns were addressed succinctly. When officials in Centre County in the swing state of Pennsylvania planned to stop counting ballots before 10 p.m., in violation of state election rules, the RNC threatened a lawsuit. Officials immediately backed down and agreed to continue the count. When precincts in Luzerne County (also in Pennsylvania) were running low on ballot papers, the RNC preemptively refreshed their supply. When malfunctions in voting machines impacted Pennsylvania’s Cambria County, the RNC secured a court order to extend the voting deadline. When Republican poll watchers in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were being “turned away,” the RNC took legal action to ensure that Republicans shared oversight of the vote-counting process.

Ken Blackwell, senior adviser for election integrity at FRC Action and the former Secretary of State for Ohio, explained how instrumental the on-the-ground work of election integrity organizations has been. “We have a highly decentralized system, over 3,100 counties, tens of thousands of precincts, and that’s where elections on Election Day take place,” he began. Noting nationwide efforts to bolster chain-of-custody rules around ballot-handling and add mandatory verification processes, Blackwell continued, “We’ve been working to recruit citizens at the precinct level, [and] train them to be observers and poll workers. And we believe that that’s the way you heighten transparency. But this election process is a human intensive process, and it only works when human beings and citizens are engaged.”

A grand total of nine states voted Tuesday night to pass constitutional amendments dictating that only U.S. citizens can vote in elections — all by 62% or more. Iowa (at 77% support), Idaho (65%), Kentucky (62.5%), Missouri (68.5%), North Carolina (77.5%), Oklahoma (80.7%), South Carolina (85.8%), and Wisconsin (66.2%) all passed such measures, as did Nevada (at over 73% support), with an added photo I.D. requirement for voting. “That says that people want to know that we’re a nation. We should be a nation with borders. And we shouldn’t be looking for voters without borders,” Blackwell stated. He added, “I would hope that folks would understand that the only way that you can guarantee transparency about security is through citizen involvement.”

In the weeks and days leading up to the election, the RNC, along with numerous Republican-led state governments, made efforts to ensure that noncitizens were barred from voting in U.S. elections. In one contentious case, Virginia elevated a lawsuit to the U.S. Supreme Court, earning a court order allowing the state to remove an estimated 1,600 noncitizens from its voter rolls. Other states — including Alabama, Florida, Montana, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, and others — also made serious efforts to clear voter rolls of noncitizens illegally registered to vote.

Prior to the election being called for former President Donald Trump, former Republican congresswoman and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann said that, if Republicans take the White House and both chambers of Congress, “there is a very strong chance that we will see real reform in our country on voting. We can’t go through this every four years. We can’t have this horrible cheating every two years or the threat of cheating.”

She continued, “I think what Donald Trump suggested — which is voter I.D., proof of citizenship, vote one day with paper ballots — I do think that that may become a reality, and we may never have to go through this again.” Bachmann also warned, “Again, we only have two years until the next midterm. So we’ve got to solve our voting issues right away.”