Their presence reassures the Republican camp and concerns the Democrats. On November 5, tens of thousands of observers will be sent by Donald Trump’s party to American polling stations to “protect the election.” A request which, according to the British news agency Reutersworries election officials and voter rights advocates. Furthermore, some observers may well be tempted to disrupt and undermine confidence in the election. Worse, to reverse the result of the presidential election in the event of victory for the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris.
Focus on aggression
“Be aggressive. The more you [le] will be in the observation and the report, the better will be the quality of the election”. Here is the directive given by Jim Womack, president of the Republican Party in North Carolina, to the numerous observers of next November 5 who came to train on the platform Zoom videoconference. In the background of the video: photos of Donald Trump and an AR-15 rifle An aggressiveness assumed and justified by the main person concerned during an interview with Reuters “The vast majority of operations aimed at. influencing elections, or rather exploiting loopholes in the law and committing fraud, come from the left,” said Jim Womack, without providing evidence.
After these two-hour training sessions, the Republican National Committee (RNC) boasted of having trained tens of thousands of volunteers to monitor polling places. And above all, for asking them to call an RNC hotline in the event of suspected irregularity. Observers not respecting this instruction would, according to the committee’s website, not be acting in compliance with the law and will therefore be dismissed from their functions.
And by “failing to act within the law,” the RNC means not identifying “illegals,” also called “non-citizens.” According to the British news agency, the subject of “non-citizen” voting was raised during two calls with the North Carolina Election Integrity Team (NCEIT), an organization with close ties to the Republican Party. During a session last July, an observer asked how to identify an “illegal,” suggesting that a person who is not an English speaker certainly does not have the right to vote. Two months earlier, a participant said she was making signs to display at polling stations in different languages, including “African”, indicating that only American citizens can vote. Interactions that Jim Womack says he does not remember, leading voter rights advocates to fear that such training will lead to targeting of black or Latino voters.
Fighting fraud… with fraud?
And if the Republican camp insists so much on the training of its observers, it is because Donald Trump and many of his supporters maintain that the 2020 elections were “stolen”. Yet U.S. election security officials maintain that the 2020 election was “the most secure in U.S. history.” According to a study conducted by the Associated Press, fewer than 475 cases of potential electoral fraud have been revealed in the six key states contested by the billionaire.
In North Carolina, 21 incidents involving observers, including 12 cases of voter intimidation, were recorded during the midterm elections in 2022. During the primaries, Jim Womack himself allegedly followed an agent who transported the ballot boxes to the electoral council office. An action which did not lead to any charges: “I wanted to make sure that the ballots were delivered safely,” he defended himself to Reuters. Since then, Lee County in North Carolina has feared further excesses. According to a study carried out in May by the Brennan Center for Justice, 34% of assessors and electoral officials had seen one of their colleagues resign out of concern for their safety.