The ‘Biggest DOJ Election Observer Effort in History’

0:00The Republican election director in Laramie County put out this statement saying, my advice to my fellow county clerks in Wyoming and to election administrators in other red states is do not think this won't happen to you. When I was covering the 2024 presidential election, my election night assignment was to cover the actual counting of votes in the swing state of Pennsylvania. So we're standing outside the building where all the votes are going to be counted up. What's the mood in there? Everyone's excited. The staff have been working really hard. They've been energized. I spent some time in a giant warehouse on the outskirts of Philadelphia where ballots would come in from around the city. There wasn't much to look at, to be honest, just a lot of paper and election staffers opening envelopes. But there were rope-dough sections of this warehouse where people were just sitting on lawn chairs watching. These are pre-approved election monitors. It's a completely normal part of the democratic process.

1:01It's all about transparency. You can see them at polling places too. But as President Donald Trump continues to hunt for what he claims without evidence is widespread cheating and fraud in US elections, some critics are wondering what exactly a Republican-aligned poll watchers looking for. Today, CNN's Gabe Cohen tells us how Trump and his allies planned to blanket polling places this November with scores of monitors and why they're especially interested in voting machines. From CNN, I'm David Rind and this is one thing midterms right after this. Stick around. When fall comes back around, there's a sense of a reset. And new pieces from Lululemon's fall job are an inspiration to push your goals and elevate your routines. Use your calendar fills, easy to layer styles, meet the demands of your day. And as you challenge yourself to try even more, versatile sets transition with you. The Lululemon fall lineup brings new levels of comfort and confidence, whether you're

2:05starting something fresh or starting something over. Check out the latest arrivals in store and on Lululemon.com now. Okay, Gabe. So you have new reporting about how the Department of Justice is planning to send election monitors to polling places around the country this November. So we're clear is that normal practice? Yeah, it is standard, not just for federal monitors from the Justice Department to be sent out to polling places. There's a long history of that. There's also a long history of partisan observers from the RNC, from the DNC, from various organizations who go out on election day to be watching to increase transparency and make sure that voting is going off without a hitch. So that is normal, but we haven't quite seen it at this scale. So the Justice Department has said it is going to launch the biggest observer effort in its history. That means more than 1,000 of these election monitors who are going to be out across the country. And what we have learned from these records that we have reviewed is that some of the

3:07federal monitors who are out during the primaries are actually new hires within the Trump administration who are attorneys with a history path ties to previous efforts to challenge or overturn the 2020 election. We also were able to determine that there is this conservative attorney who pled guilty and served 20 days in jail for this incident back in 2016 where he was accused of essentially committing a cyber attack that helped him enter a restricted section of a county elections website. I mean, so I guess the fear from critics would be that if certain folks with ties to the election denier movement, if you want to call it that, are going out in November that that could be some of the aims this time around. What does the DOJ say about that? Well, the DOJ pushback on any notion that their monitors are going to be interfering in voting or election administration during the midterms at all.

4:08They sent me a statement saying that DOJ staff, the monitors are expected to do their job consistent with all legal and ethical obligations, no exceptions. They also said to imply that our team will act improperly based on nothing more than speculation would be dishonest. And to be clear, there is no evidence at this point that there are going to be any sort of disruptions at polling places or that any Americans are not going to be able to vote as a result of this monitor effort. But we did see this incident in Wyoming that was quite interesting where Republican officials in the state essentially said that the two federal monitors that the Justice Department had sent there during the August primaries were very aggressive that they had tried to interview voters in Wyoming that they were pushing poll workers for sort of information on their training. And then a lot of information on voting machines. And in fact, the Republican election director in Laramie County put out this statement saying,

5:11my advice to my fellow county clerks in Wyoming and to election administrators in other red states is do not think this won't happen to you. So the Republican officials there were quite fired up about what happened, though I will also say we spoke to election officials in various other counties who were there during the primaries who said that the election monitor program went off without a hitch that they didn't have any sort of issues with the federal monitors. And so you hit on an important point, which is one of the concerns is as the Justice Department has been overhauled and there are all of these new attorneys that have been brought in. Many of them with long standing ties to various Trump-aligned groups. The question to a lot of folks is are they all going to follow the traditional standards of the department when it comes to their role as an election monitor because many of them have. And yet we've had incidents like them one in Wyoming where we did find that those two monitors were also new hires within the Justice Department since Trump took office who had

6:12previous ties to either Trump-aligned organizations or Trump allies in Congress. We should say that conservative attorney gave mentioned David Levin, CNN reached out to him by phone this week. He told CNN he had no comment on his work at DOJ or whether he will be deployed on election day. When we come back, what to make of a Republican effort to scrutinize voting machines? Stick with us. When ever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year I've been layering in some styles from the new Louis Levin fall drop because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Louis Levin's fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces so I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new fall arrivals in store and online now at LouisLevin.com.

7:13Well, give me a mention that it's not just the Department of Justice. There are other partisan groups that send out poll launchers, poll monitors during election day. Do we know what that's going to look like in November? Well, we know in recent years the RNC has really been beefing up its election observer efforts. But what we have found that is new is we were able to review these records that indicate that the RNC is training a new class of what they call special monitors. And these are people who are going to be focused primarily on voting machines. Voting machines. Thank you all for joining me this evening. So the training that we're going to be hosting tonight is our special monitor training. We were able to review these training materials from the RNC in Wisconsin where they told volunteers that this was being really launched as a pilot program during the primaries. And then for the general election, they were hoping to expand it, not just within Wisconsin

8:15but to other states as well with the goal of really ramping it up for 2028. So again, this is just to emphasize that having you all on the ground, notifying us of issues allows us to take direct action in this leads to real outcomes that benefit Republicans across the state. So they are going to be looking at how voting machines are being used not just on election day, but during the pre-election testing through voting and then through the vote tabulation. So you can see in box A, it actually says, you know, where this machine is deployed in box B, it has the serial number, the tabulator ID unique to that machine. So they will be out there essentially auditing the process. So they're going to be looking for what are the serial numbers on those voting machines. We want to be there to verify that if the test deck that was pre-audited should have 10 votes for Donald Trump, when it comes out of the machine, it has those 10 votes on it. The ones that are tested before Election Day doesn't match the machines that we then see

9:15inside of polling places on Election Day. They're going to want seal logs, evidence that those tamper-proof seals that are on voting machines that they have not been touched, that there are no votes that have been counted in advance. And then they are supposed to report any concerns, any discrepancies that they see through a hotline that the RNC is set up up to the party's attorneys who can prepare potential challenges. It sounds like they're really trying to get under the hood of this actual equipment. Have we seen anything like that before? No, from what we can tell, this does seem to be a new effort. Now the RNC has defended its observer efforts. They sent me a statement saying, if democracy dies in darkness, then shining a light on how elections are run should not be controversial. Special monitors observe public election procedures, a standard practice that builds voter confidence. If Democrats have nothing to hide, they should join Republicans in ensuring the rules are followed. And again, they see this as an audit of voting machines to make sure that they are being

10:18used correctly and that chain of custody is transparent. Many people have questioned whether it could actually be possible to electronically manipulate vote totals or change election results on these terrible machines. I will note though, it's very interesting within the context of what we have heard from Trump and his allies in recent years, but also specifically in recent months when it comes to voting machines. And ballot counting systems are exposed to hacking and manipulation and corruption, which is this claim that they are hackable, that they are very vulnerable because of the foreign components that are inside those machines or have been calls by some to potentially ban those machines altogether. And now we know the RNC wants to keep a close eye. I was going to say that has been a big talking point from Trump and not necessarily a ton of evidence at all to back up some of those claims. So I guess the question is like, what is that port 10 going forward?

11:18Well, and we don't know. When it comes to this observer effort, once again, the RNC has defended it saying that this is really about transparency and that in the past, they have made challenges that are successful. They've had observers who are out there who notice issues with machine testing or delays. And they are arguing that this is a necessary tool to make sure that elections are run properly in November. But there are also those folks who are wondering, are there going to be misconceptions or routine discrepancies that sort of get elevated? And that continued to feed into this narrative that we have heard that elections are rigged against Republicans. Right. I was going to say, I don't think anybody would dispute that we want these machines to be top of the line ready to go that there's nothing to ferry is going on. But because this has been so politicized and so much disinformation in the space, I think that if voters see folks milling around the polling place looking at machines, they might

12:19get some ideas whether that's grounded in reality or not. Yeah. And I think that's a big question. I mean, the quote that you heard from that official and Wyoming, I think really hits on that, that they're worried about stifling voters at all. They don't want voters to not want to come to the polls. And so reporting this story out, we also wanted to be really careful about stressing that there's no evidence that they're going to be these sort of disruptions, at least not day of. But yes, there are a lot of folks who fear that as we saw after 2020, where observer claims were really elevated and became a foundational building block of the narratives that still exist today. I think people were called to testify. Yeah, absolutely. And there were claims about suitcases of fake ballots that were pulled out by poll workers in Georgia and claims that poll workers in Arizona were using sharpies in order to invalidate ballots where people had cast votes for Trump. Those did not turn out to be true.

13:21Those were never substantiated. And yet some of those claims still linger today. And they were born of what observers said they saw on election day. And so as we see those efforts beefed up more and more, there are those people who say, it appears that Trump and his allies are trying to so doubt in the results of the midterms even before they happen. And they wonder, could the election observer programs that we're seeing and more and more eyes and ears at the polls could that feed into it? Yeah. And again, DOJ says their goal is not to disrupt anything. And we'll just have to see what it looks like come election day. Thanks, Kate. Thanks. It's all the time we have for today. But I do want to say, as we post this, the Supreme Court just handed President Trump a big win. It says states can use a controversial citizenship data collection tool for reviewing voter roles. Consequently, a decision here, head over to CNN.com to read more about it. And we'll have another update on this fee with more news later tonight. Talk to you next time.

14:23When fall comes back around, there's a sense of a reset. And new pieces from Lululemon's fall job are an inspiration to push your goals and elevate your routines. Use your calendar fills, easy to layer styles, meet the demands of your day. And as you challenge yourself to try even more, versatile sets transition with you. The Lululemon fall lineup brings new levels of comfort and confidence, whether you're starting something fresh or starting something over. Check out the latest arrivals in store and on Lululemon.com now. So you're not worried about hosting the whole family for the holidays? Why would I be? Wayfair had everything I needed to get the house holiday ready. What if Mike brings his cheerful dogs? Mike Tree has tons of five star reviews telling me how sturdy it is. But what if everyone's plus one brings a plus one? We'll see how extendable this extendable table really is. And extra chairs are on the way. Okay. What if there's a blizzard and everyone has to sleep over? Ready to go with extra bedding and towels. From guest-ready essentials to holiday decor you can trust. Wayfair delivers.