'Be aggressive': Republican poll watchers in battleground states worry US election experts

By Helen Coster, Alexandra Ulmer and Tim Reid

SANFORD, North Carolina (Reuters) - "Be aggressive," Jim Womack, a local Republican Party chair in North Carolina, told the grid of faces who joined the Zoom training session for volunteers to monitor voting on Nov. 5. "The more assertive and aggressive you are in watching and reporting, the better the quality of the election."

During the two-hour session, conducted from a Republican Party office featuring a placard of an AR-15 rifle and photos of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Womack, 69, an army veteran and a retired information systems engineer,  instructed 40 volunteers on how to spot "nefarious activity." He mentioned a local clergyman who accompanied dozens of Latino parishioners to a voting site "like a shepherd leading a sheep."   

Voter fraud is exceedingly rare in the United States - despite Trump's false claim, supported by a majority of Republicans in Congress, that the 2020 election was stolen. 

U.S. election security officials have said the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history.” A months-long analysis by the Associated Press found fewer than 475 cases of potential voter fraud in the six battleground states challenged by Trump.

With less than two weeks to go until the Nov. 5 election, officials in Lee County in the battleground state of North Carolina told Reuters they are concerned that training sessions like Womack's, with its call for aggressive scrutiny of the voting process, could lead to disruptions at the polls. The Lee County officials say they are adopting new safeguards to prevent poll workers from feeling intimidated.

Womack said that election officials should welcome his North Carolina Election Integrity Team as additional eyes and ears to ensure a fair election. NCEIT has close links to the Republican Party.

Reuters observed an Oct. 16 NCEIT training session and obtained previously unreported transcripts of NCEIT planning calls, which raised the prospect of noncitizen voting.

Reuters also spoke to 10 election officials, former election officials and voter rights advocates who expressed concerns that some poll watchers could disrupt, delay and undermine confidence in the election, and potentially lay the groundwork to overturn the result if Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris wins.

"The playbook seems to be to cast doubt, sow chaos at every possible opportunity, so that if you lose you then have laid the foundation in the minds of your followers and supporters to justify additional action," said Tammy Patrick, a former election official who now works at the National Association of Election Administrators, a nonpartisan group of state election directors.

HOW TO SPOT AN 'ILLEGAL'

Poll watchers, who monitor the casting and counting of ballots at polling stations, have been a feature of the American electoral system for decades.

The Democratic Party plans to field its own observers at polling places, including those in Lee County. The Democratic National Committee and the Harris campaign said they are mobilizing thousands of volunteers in voter protection teams across key states, but declined to give further details.   

Despite its extreme rarity, Trump and his fellow Republicans have made allegations of noncitizen voting a key part of preparations for legal challenges if Trump loses on Nov. 5.

"Non citizen Illegal Migrants are getting the right to vote, being pushed by crooked Democrat Politicians," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform in July.

NCEIT addressed noncitizen voting in two planning calls, according to the transcripts obtained by Reuters. In July, a participant raised the subject of how to spot an "illegal" and suggested that a person who can't speak English probably doesn't have the right to vote.

One participant in an NCEIT planning call in May said she makes signs for polling locations in different languages, including in "African," stating only U.S. citizens can vote. She called her signs "psyop," shorthand for psychological operations aimed at influencing people's behavior.

Womack said that he doesn't recall that conversation and does not agree with the assertion. "These live calls are conversations and we get lots of inquiries," he said. He added that NCEIT strives to educate and train participants in accordance with the law, and sometimes has to correct invalid statements and assertions on the calls.

But he said that NCEIT's “antenna are up about the influx of Hispanics, and they're accidentally being registered to vote.”

Patrick Gannon, public information director for the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said there was no evidence of noncitizens trying to affect the election in any way.

NCEIT would challenge any voter it believed was ineligible, Womack said. He also told trainees to be polite and said that NCEIT does not "condone voter suppression or intimidation of any kind."

Some voter rights advocates said the training could lead to unfair targeting of Black or Latino voters. 

"We're concerned that rhetoric about noncitizens voting will be used to say there was some sort of irregularity and try to prevent the election results from being certified," said Katelin Kaiser, policy director at watchdog group Democracy North Carolina.

WATCHING THE WATCHERS

Womack does not accept the evidence that election fraud is very rare. While he said he does not use the word "stolen" to describe the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden, he insists the election was "manipulated by Big Tech, Big Government, and Big Media."  

“The vast majority of the operations seeking to shape the election, or I should say, not shape, to exploit vulnerabilities in the law and to commit fraud in the election are coming from the left,” Womack told Reuters in an interview. “There's no doubt about it,” he added.

NCEIT is affiliated to the Election Integrity Network, an organization run by Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who played a key role in trying to overturn Trump's 2020 election loss. In 2020, Mitchell was on the call when Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find enough votes to reverse Biden's victory in the state.  

Christina Norton, the director of the Republican Party’s election integrity unit, joins a weekly Friday morning call hosted by Mitchell’s EIN group, according to Womack, who also attends.  

Mitchell and Norton did not respond to Reuters when asked for comment.

The Republican National Committee says it has trained tens of thousands of volunteer poll watchers, instructing them to call an RNC hotline to report suspected irregularities. RNC poll watchers who do not act within the law will be dismissed, the party says on its website. 

An official familiar with the operations of the RNC's Election Integrity Unit, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the RNC has no relationship with groups such as NCEIT that train poll watchers. The official said RNC poll watcher efforts are independent from those groups.

BLURRED LINES

In Lee County, which Trump won comfortably in 2020 and 2016, the lines are blurred. Womack is himself the Republican Party chair. He said NCEIT sends its list of poll watchers to both parties for possible inclusion in their efforts.

"To me, it seems like they're trying to gather data that they could put together to then create doubt in the election," said Lee County Elections board Chairwoman Susan Feindel, a Democrat. "All I want is to have a free and fair election and to be left alone so that we can do our jobs." 

Lee County election officials say they have taken precautions to guard against what they see as overly aggressive behavior by some poll observers who have been trained by NCEIT.  

After state legislation last year allowed observers to move more freely around polling stations, Lee County officials said they ordered curtains for the booths. They also purchased screen protectors to cover voting machines and privacy sleeves to cover ballots. 

In the 2022 midterm congressional elections, the North Carolina election board registered 21 incidents regarding poll watchers, including 12 of voter intimidation, eight of election official intimidation and one of voter interference. Their records do not specify who trained those poll watchers.  

In the primaries earlier that year, Womack followed an election worker who was transporting ballot boxes to the board of elections office, according to an incident report reviewed by Reuters.

Womack was not charged with wrongdoing. He told Reuters he had wanted to ensure that the ballots were delivered safely to the board of elections office. He does not view his actions as intimidation.

Since then, Lee County Elections Director Jane Rae Fawcett has asked local police to be on stand-by at the end of polling, in case election officials need additional security as they transport ballots. 

The concerns about overly aggressive poll watchers are not limited to North Carolina.

"My main concern is voter intimidation by poll watchers, as well as intimidating election workers and getting into their faces, generally slowing them down and creating disruptions," said Andrew Garber, a lawyer and elections expert with New York University's non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice. 

(Reporting by Helen Coster in Sanford, North Carolina, Alexandra Ulmer in San Francisco and Tim Reid in Washington; Editing by Ross Colvin and Suzanne Goldenberg)