The Republican National Committee (RNC) spent $40 million on election integrity in the 2020 cycle. This investment funded lawsuits protecting ballot security, recounts, and poll watching. While the party’s 2020 efforts were unprecedented, RNC Chairwoman McDaniel recognized the need to evaluate the party’s role in election integrity and recommend policies to avoid a repeat of election administration failures in 2020. To aid in this effort, Chairwoman McDaniel established the temporary Committee on Election Integrity, which last week adopted an exhaustive report covering these issues. This report is the product of extensive research and consultation with 30 experts. Chief among these recommendations is that the Republican Party transform its integrity operations from a temporary ad hoc structure to a permanent and year-round operation covering all aspects of the elections process.The Committee found that in the 2020 election cycle:
- Democrat leaders leveraged the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to water down election integrity safeguards by ramming through last-minute changes to the election process.
- Many changes were enacted by courts that disregarded long-standing laws, by Democrat Governors who abused their emergency powers, and by officials such as Secretaries of State who ignored state laws duly passed by their legislatures.
- Some public officials used the pandemic as a pretense to expand mail voting and eliminate key absentee voting safeguards such as witness and ID requirements. Policies such as automatically mailing ballots to all voters and waiving ballot delivery deadlines also led to chaos and decreased confidence in our elections.
To avoid a repeat of these problems and to increase election integrity and confidence, the Committee made policy recommendations covering all aspects of the elections process including that states:
- Enact various reforms to clean up their voter rolls, such as increased cooperation between state agencies and legislative oversight to ensure officials are prioritizing the issue.
- Eliminate same-day and automatic voter registration.
- Enact ID requirements for all voting methods, while ensuring officials educate the public on ID requirements and provide free IDs to those few without one.
- Only use voting systems that produce a paper record of a voter’s selections that is reviewable pre-tabulation and auditable post-election.
- Prohibit ballot harvesting.
- Enact uniform and enforceable standards for rejecting and accepting absentee ballots.
- Enact reforms to increase transparency and access to the voting process, public records and voting information.
- Enhance cybersecurity requirements for voting systems, including that they have no wireless, network, or internet connectivity at any stage of the election process.
- Allow political parties and state legislatures to have standing to bring or intervene in election-related litigation.
- States should prohibit the acceptance or the use of any nongovernmental, third-party, or private money, grants, or gifts from outside sources to assist in the administration of an election.
In addition to these established goals — which polling shows the majority of the American people support — the Committee recommended the RNC set up a year-round election integrity operation. This includes hiring in-state Election Integrity Directors, monitoring state and county-level election processes to ensure laws are being followed, training thousands of poll watchers to observe all steps in the elections process, and continuing to engage in lawsuits that protect and promote election integrity.
Attached are talking points for your use and the full report is available HERE.