What Are Democrats Worried About Poll Watchers Trying To Hide?

The 2020 presidential election was unlike anything we’ve ever seen. Whether it was mass (and unsupervised) mail-in balloting, long delays in counting, mismatched ballot curing, or hundreds of millions of dollars of private funding poured into Democrat strongholds in swing states, it was a complete takeover of America’s elections apparatus by the left, and many voters rightly started to distrust the election process. 

The Republican National Committee as well as grassroots organizations are channeling voters’ skepticism and encouraging them to get involved in overseeing their local elections. As such, citizen-run task forces around the country — particularly in key battleground states — are training voters to become poll watchers. 

And the left is freaking out. 

A day doesn’t go by without corporate media ominously warning of the threat right-wing “conspiracy theorists” pose at the polls. Intelligence officials are telling their media allies they’re on high alert for rising threats of physical violence against election workers by supposed supporters of former President Donald Trump (despite the fact that the DOJ’s own “election security” hotline resulted in only five prosecutions out of more than 1,000 threats reported). 

The New York Times Editorial Board is actually characterizing Republican efforts to recruit poll workers for local elections as a “threat to democracy,” with The Atlantic parroting the same line and describing right-wing volunteers as “election deniers” (while repeatedly emphasizing the security of American elections ad nauseam). A recent Politico piece implies election officials should not trust the poll workers at their own precinct. Such propaganda will only continue as we get closer and closer to November. 

But do these accusations hold out? 

“Quite the contrary,” former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell told The Federalist. “Voters should enthusiastically welcome election observers because they help ensure that no voter’s ballot will be diluted or canceled.”

Case in point: in 2020, a Republican poll watcher in Georgia found that a recount error gave more than 9,000 extra votes to Biden over Trump. A batch of ballots in DeKalb County was incorrectly labeled as containing 10,707 votes for Biden, when it only contained 1,081 votes for him. That poll watcher helped ensure DeKalb County voters’ ballots were not diluted by fraudulent tallies. 

Another Republican election inspector in Fairfax County, Virginia —the most populous county in the state — noticed that the Fairfax County Electoral Board was processing absentee and mail-in ballot applications that did not include the last four digits of the applicant’s Social Security Number, thereby violating state law. While the Public Interest Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit against the election board for its alleged violation, a Virginia circuit court ruled the group did not have standing to sue. 

The laws “exist to protect the right to vote and must always be followed to ensure free and fair elections,” PILF President J. Christian Adams said of the lawsuit at the time. 

And that’s exactly right. Concerned citizens across the nation are becoming poll watchers and election inspectors solely to ensure that our elections are free and fair, and that election administrators follow the law. Such volunteers are protecting the integrity of their fellow citizen’s vote, no matter if they’re on the left or right. 

“No election administrator should discourage civic engagement,” Blackwell said. “We are citizens, not subjects. Transparency is an element of good governance.”

If the left is so concerned over the influx of volunteers and grassroots organizations wanting to ensure the integrity of local elections, it begs this question: what are they trying to hide? 

Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.

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