Loudoun County General Registrar Judy Brown doesn’t recall seeing many poll watchers during early voting last year — they usually turn up only on Election Day, primarily during presidential elections.
But that’s changed.
“This year,” she said, “we have had poll watchers here every day, all day long, watching the process of what’s going on.”
And in a county that has been trending blue for years, more poll watchers are wearing Republican badges, Brown said, often outnumbering Democrats 2 to 1 at each location. They observe the voter check-in and the ballot drop boxes. They have asked to observe election officers opening voting equipment. They watch as election officers report the vote tallies at the end of the night and ensure slates are blank when the polls open in the morning.
“I really think it’s a result of all the stuff in the news media about there being fraud in the election process last year,” Brown said. “They can come to the same conclusion as we do: that there is no fraud in the process.”
Across Virginia, the GOP “election integrity” push has largely driven the influx of election observers in this year’s gubernatorial race, according to local, state and national Republican officials. In some trainings, prospective poll watchers have been taught to see themselves as a bulwark against election fraud, and some groups have been corralling their own poll watcher armies.
But while multiple registrars said they welcomed the poll watchers’ commitment to transparency, some tactics have made election officials uneasy — because it’s clear former President Donald Trump’s claims of mass voter fraud have driven a lot of the interest, said Fairfax County General Registrar Scott Konopasek. It’s created a sense among some staff members that the observers don’t trust them, he said.
“Virginians have no reason to doubt the integrity of any of the elections they voted in,” Konopasek said. “There is no lack of integrity. But there is a narrative that says there is, and that’s what they’re responding to.”
Poll watchers, or election observers, are distinct from election officers in that they are not allowed to assist voters in the polling place. As their names suggest, they only watch, while reporting any issues to election officers who can resolve them, or to party officials. Poll watchers are authorized by political parties or candidates, and up to three from each party can be in the room to watch the election unfold.
Numerous GOP officials described the poll watcher trainings as a branch extending from election integrity efforts — something Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin has seized on as a core tenet of his campaign, calling for an audit of Virginia voting machines and repeatedly encouraging poll watchers to volunteer. His campaign, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment, invites people to join an “election integrity task force,” while hosting poll watcher trainings across the state.
On the national level, the Republican National Committee, which developed an election integrity unit during the 2020 race, has since expanded the program in 12 battleground states. This year, according to a spokeswoman, it’s trained 3,500 prospective poll watchers in Virginia — where the country’s only competitive gubernatorial election is taking place next week.
And on the local level, GOP committees have developed their own “election integrity subcommittees” to review voter rolls and their local registrars’ election practices — efforts that local GOP officials said have provided avenues for hundreds of volunteers to get involved in the election through poll watching or becoming sworn election officers.
Steve Knotts, chairman of the Fairfax County Republican Committee, said that he did not believe voter fraud was a problem in Virginia, but that many members of his group still have voter fraud fears and have been galvanized by the rhetoric of the past year to want to find out for themselves.
Poll watching, Knotts said, is a “hands-on” way for those with questions to get them answered. He said 500 to 600 people have signed up, ascribing the influx of volunteers to concerns about election integrity and enthusiasm for Youngkin.
“Their job is to see anything that looks irregular and point it out. We’re not there trying to trap anybody or cause a disruption — it’s just to watch the process,” he said.
On a Tuesday evening early this month, streams of prospective poll watchers filed into an American Legion outpost in Arlington, gathering at tables in a room blanketed by stale cigarette smoke for the latest GOP training event. Most trainees did not agree to an interview, but one, Jose Galdos, said he signed up because “I just feel like the integrity of our elections is slipping.”
Galdos, who immigrated to Virginia from Bolivia as a child, said that while he was concerned about election integrity, he did not believe Trump’s claims of a stolen election. He saw his job as a poll watcher as a way to “just keep people honest,” watching out for easily fixable mistakes.
State and local GOP representatives would not allow a Washington Post reporter to observe the training, which was organized by the Youngkin campaign and state GOP and led by Clara Belle Wheeler, a former Virginia Board of Elections member who advocates for stricter voting laws at the Virginia Institute for Public Policy. But a similar video training offered by Wheeler at the “Virginia Election Integrity Summit” in Richmond in August is available online through the conservative Leadership Institute.
“Poll watchers are what they used to say about small children: They should be seen and not heard,” Wheeler told the crowd in the video, urging them to take notes and report any observable problems — not intervene themselves.
Wheeler offered pointers on what to watch for: voting tallies that don’t match the number of voters checked in that day; anyone trying to influence voters; unauthorized people touching voting machines.
At the end of Wheeler’s presentation, a PowerPoint slide told the trainees that election officers and poll watchers are the main “line of defense against election fraud. Both need to know how to stop fraud and what to do if it does occur.”
“You’ve all got to be out there. You’re the front line of defense. We need 15,000,” Wheeler said.
