RNC Announces Expanded Election Integrity Division ahead of November Elections

Last week, the Republican National Committee (RNC) announced an expanded focus on election integrity and turnout ahead of the presidential election in November. The news comes in the wake of Biden administration officials voicing opposition to what are widely considered common sense election integrity laws, such as voter ID requirements.

Newly elected RNC Co-Chair Lara Trump announced that a “first-ever” election integrity division has been created at the committee. On a recent episode of “In The Arena with Benny Johnson,” she detailed some of the work that the division is undertaking.

“In 23 states, [we have] 78 lawsuits singlehandedly to address this issue, to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat in 2024,” she described. “We know about all the states who illegally changed their voting laws in 2020 under the guise of COVID. [The lawsuits] flipped some of those back around [and also] added another layer of protection on top of that. In addition, we now have the ability to train poll workers. … These are people who get to handle a ballot who can count the ballots coming in and the ballots going out so they know what the numbers should be at the end of the day.”

Trump, the daughter-in-law of former President and Republican Nominee Donald Trump, went on to relate how the RNC is also “hiring and asking for volunteer attorneys all across this country. We want you in a polling location near you at every single minute there is voting going on because we want to be able to address a problem immediately in real time.”

Lara Trump also argued that the GOP must “start thinking about things like legal ballot harvesting, something we’ve never embraced as a party. We’re going to start doing it now. … We also have to embrace early voting. … We’ve got to bank enough votes going into November 5th that we’re not playing catch up on election day. We need to swamp the system so it doesn’t matter how many 3 a.m. drops they have or suitcases filled with ballots.”

Meanwhile, Biden administration officials such as Attorney General Merrick Garland appear to be advocating for looser laws surrounding election integrity. On March 3, Garland stated that voter ID laws are “discriminatory, burdensome, and unnecessary.” However, studies have shown that voter ID laws have no negative impact on voter registration or turnout, with turnout increasing in some cases after newly enacted ID requirements. In addition, polls show that Americans support voter ID laws by up to an 80% margin.

“That’s one of the most stupid things I’ve ever heard, given the fact that you need IDs to get food stamps, to get on planes, to buy alcohol, etc.,” Ken Blackwell, a board member of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, told The Washington Stand. “It’s an insult to those Americans who are accustomed to photo IDs to say that somehow protecting the integrity of our election system, this is now ‘burdensome and discriminatory.’ It’s just plain stupid.”

Blackwell, who serves as FRC Action’s special advisor for Election Integrity, further expressed appreciation for the efforts of the RNC toward securing the integrity of voting.

“I have been working for months now with Christina [Bobb, the RNC’s senior counsel for Election Integrity]. They have a first-rate election integrity team, both at their headquarters and out in the states,” he explained. “They are working with an extensive network of grassroots organizations, and I think [this] will give us the optimum positive impact on not only voter turnout but voter confidence in the legitimacy of the vote count.”

Blackwell, a former mayor of Cincinnati, concluded by noting the connection between the Biden administration’s open border policies with their efforts to relax election integrity laws. “The Biden administration is engaged in an all-out assault on the integrity of American citizenship with their open borders and with their opposition to those measures that protect the integrity of American citizenship. It is not only anti-American, it is an assault on our constitutional republic.”