‘We all know what happened in Detroit’
This fall, another army of poll watchers is going to Detroit and other cities around the country.
The RNC has long declined to share what it teaches poll watchers behind closed doors, but NBC News has obtained a recording from inside a training session in August, providing a window into the tools it’s giving hundreds of supporters.
“Having Republican workers and challengers at these locations presents a very big deterrent,” Ray, the RNC’s election integrity director in Michigan, told volunteers in the training session. “Having our folks at these locations, it’s a big deterrent.”
Slides briefly explained the election process and state election laws before outlining how to challenge voters, their ballots and the counting process. “Your No. 1 function is to monitor the election to make sure that proper voting procedures are being followed,” Ray said.
Some of the advice was concrete and specific: Make sure the tabulators are at zero at the start of the day and that voter IDs are being checked, Ray advised. Challenge all voters who want to vote in person but who the poll book says have already voted absentee.
From there, the guidance got vaguer: Poll challengers can challenge a voter if they have a “valid reason” to believe the voter isn’t a citizen or 18 years old, isn’t registered or doesn’t live where the voter is registered to vote, Ray said. She suggested using the acronym “CARN” to help voters remember the categories — citizenship, age, residency and not registered.
But Ray offered no details about what those “valid” reasons might be, even as attendees mentioned baseless fraud claims, such as that voting machines in 2020 were programmed to steal votes or that thousands of mail ballots appeared fraudulent. The training session’s only caution was that poll monitors follow the law, be courteous and not make defamatory accusations of fraud.
The RNC plans to target Ann Arbor, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Kalamazoo, Muskegon and Warren, Ray said, listing Michigan cities with significant populations of Democrats.
“If you guys are comfortable in these locations, we certainly need you guys there,” she said.
The RNC is using right-wing celebrities to recruit volunteers, like Jack Posobiec, well-known for spreading the false “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, and Arizona Senate nominee Kari Lake, a prominent election denier.
“We have to keep our eyeballs on the whole system, and we know why,” Lake said at the August training session.
The RNC isn’t the only organization training poll challengers and activists in Michigan: The Election Integrity Fund and Force, which sent many volunteers to the TCF Center in 2020, is also hosting training sessions, giving combative scripts to eager attendees.
In a video of an Election Integrity Fund and Force training session in July obtained by NBC News, organizers offered a suggested script for challengers dealing with poll workers who “deceive” them: “I believe you have not fulfilled your legal obligation to correct this problem, which exposes you to criminal prosecution unless corrected.”
In a text message, Sandy Kiesel, the organization’s executive director, confirmed it was training volunteers.
“The bedrock of a free and fair democracy is the citizens doing their civic duty of participating as poll inspectors, poll challengers and other oversight positions,” she said.
Michigan conservatives have spent the last two years organizing around election issues, former Trump election lawyer Cleta Mitchell said. Activists have begun deploying amateur voter list maintenance programs, including the Mitchell-linked EagleAI, that could be used to challenge voters’ eligibility based on public records, even as experts warn the data is inadequate to make such judgments.
“If we’re going to save our elections and save our country, we have to get involved. We can’t just be angry about it. We have to get our hands dirty,” Mitchell said on “The Tudor Dixon Podcast” in June.
At the August RNC training session, an attendee asked what would happen if the events at the TCF Center repeated themselves. Ray’s answer was cautious.
“There’s a lot of misinformation out there when it comes to Detroit. We all know what happened in Detroit in 2020, right? There was a whole lot of chaos. There wasn’t a statewide program really in effect. So, folks, you know, when they saw things, they either didn’t necessarily understand the process, they didn’t know who to report to, it was kind of hot mess,” she said.
The party organized and didn’t have the same issues during the 2022 midterm elections, she said, before she turned back to the mission.
“Am I here to say that that will never happen again?” she said. “No, because, you know, it very much could.”
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