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RNC claims Detroit violated the law by hiring significantly more Dem poll workers than Republicans

August 24, 2024 | | Print Article

The Republican National Committee (RNC) has sued Detroit’s Election Commission for hiring way more Democrat poll workers than Republican poll workers.

According to Fox News, Section 168.74 of the state’s election law explicitly states that election commissioners “shall appoint an equal number, as nearly as possible, of election inspectors in each election precinct from each major political party.”

Yet for this year’s primary elections, Detroit election officials hired 2,300 Democrat poll workers but only 300 Republican poll workers. This, according to the RNC, is some bull.

“Detroit’s failure to hire Republican poll workers is the kind of bad-faith Democrat interference that drives down faith in elections,” RNC chair Michael Whatley and co-chair Lara Trump said in a statement.

“The RNC is bringing suit to remedy this completely unacceptable breach of public trust and our unprecedented election integrity campaign will continue to fight in Michigan and nationwide to protect the rights of every voter to have fair, accurate, secure and transparent elections,” they added.

“The 7.5-to-1 ratio of Democrats to Republicans that resulted in the lack of parity within 300 of the 335 precincts violated the Election Commission’s statutory duty to appoint ‘an equal number, as nearly as possible’ of election inspectors in each election precinct from each political party,” the lawsuit itself reads.

The lawsuit alleges that the chair of the Wayne County 12th Congressional District Republican Committee submitted a list of 675 Republicans who wanted to serve as poll watchers, but that the committee only appointed 52 of them to serve. The rest of the ostensible Republican poll watchers were evidently chosen at random.

The lawsuit demands that Detroit officials appoint more Republican poll watchers and put together a plan to ensure this imbalance doesn’t occur again.

This is one of several lawsuits the RNC has filed this election season. In March, the RNC sued Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson for not maintaining “an accurate and current voter registration roll for elections for federal office.”

“Election integrity starts with clean voter rolls, and that’s why the National Voter Registration Act requires state officials to keep their rolls accurate and up-to-date,” Whatley said at the time.

“Jocelyn Benson has failed to follow the NVRA, leaving Michigan with inflated and inaccurate voter rolls ahead of the 2024 election. The RNC is filing this key lawsuit because Michigan voters deserve clean voter rolls and confidence in their elections,” he added.

The RNC found at the time that 76 of Michigan’s 83 counties had inflated voter rolls, suggesting that the state wasn’t complying with federal voter roll laws.

In the suit, the RNC asked the court to rule that Michigan officials were violating the law and to issue an order forcing said officials “to develop and implement reasonable and effective registration list-maintenance programs to cure their failure to comply … and to ensure that ineligible registrants are not on the voter rolls.”

Dovetailing back to the present, this week the RNC also sued the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) for not following a new law that calls for removing noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls.

The RNC alleged in a press release that the board has “deliberately declined” to enforce the law.

“The NCSBE has chosen to blatantly ignore the law, undermine basic election safeguards, and neglect a fundamental principle of our election integrity,” Whatley said. “The RNC and NCGOP defended this law in court, and now we will make sure the NCSBE follows and enforces these critical safeguards in The Old North State.”

N.C. election officials have claimed the allegation against them is nonsense.

“Pat Gannon, a spokesperson for the board, said this accusation was ‘categorically false’ and that the agency has already worked with superior courts across the state to implement the new law,” according to The Charlotte Observer.

“The elections board asked the NC GOP and the RNC to rescind their press releases on the lawsuit ‘as they will undermine voter confidence on an entirely false premise,'” the reporting continues.

That’s correct — in response to Republicans complaining about noncitizens on N.C.’s voter rolls, Democrats said stop complaining because the COMPLAINTS (versus the voter rolls) will reduce people’s faith in elections.

Uh huh …

Vivek Saxena
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