Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost joined other Republican officials on Friday to recruit poll watchers and volunteers at a Republican National Committee event.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost joined other Republican officials in recruiting poll watchers and poll workers at a Republican National Committee event on Friday.
The Protect the Vote Tour is a nationwide project of the Republican National Committee to recruit poll workers, lawyers and observers to secure elections.
According to New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, numerous reports have found that voter fraud is rare in the United States and many cases of suspected voter fraud turn out to be voter or administrative errors.
The RNC project focuses on 18 states, including Ohio, where Governor Mike DeWine signed one of the strictest voter ID laws in the country.
RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said the committee wants to have at least 5,000 poll watchers in each swing state. He said county parties would put observers on a list and give it to the county election board.
Whatley said he was not concerned about voter intimidation because the monitors were trained and working within state law.
“One of the things we focus on in the training is to make sure that we respect the process, that we respect the poll workers and, most importantly, that we respect the voters,” he said.
Whatley said that “99.5 percent of the time” there were no problems with voting, but observers would make sure that no one got too close to the voting machines and that unregistered voters did not come to the polls.
“We’ve seen a number of cases across the country where there have been honest mistakes, but the goal is to expose them and make sure the process is followed correctly across the state,” he said.
Yost said Ohio is the “gold standard.”
“We have a cross-party monitoring function in the actual conduct of the elections, in the counting and casting of votes, and also the possibility for observers. The best solution to ensure that everyone follows the rules is to monitor each other,” he said.
Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who serves in the Army Reserve, was unable to attend because he was on active duty in North Carolina.
Erin Glynn is a reporter for the Ohio Bureau of the USA TODAY Network, which covers the Columbus Dispatch, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.
