Warren Jenkins
- As a volunteer poll watcher in Virginia, Jenkins would run back and forth between the outdoor ballot box and the in-door voting place, observing the conduct of the election, and report irregularities and violations of the Election Code to election officials.
- Jenkins is one of many who saw themselves as a part of a movement to defend the integrity of America’s elections, concerned that the 2020 election was not conducted well.
Ground-Up Movement
- Jenkin's resolve to act proved fortuitous, because just as Republicans like him decided to become more involved in elections, roads were built to help them do exactly that.
- Cleta Mitchell, a seasoned lawyer with a swath of experience in all corners of election issues, leads the Election Integrity Network, a project of the Conservative Partnership Institute, a Washington-based non-profit
- Through training and discussion "summits," the network has kicked off state-level "coalitions" across the country, and these state coalitions would then become the headquarters of mobilizing precinct-level task forces in that state to work on election integrity projects.
Getting to Work
- The Election Integrity Network started humbly with weekly telephone calls, during which state coalition leaders in various battleground states would bounce ideas off of each other on how to improve election security and share the issues they spot.
- Lynn Taylor organized the first “Election Integrity Summit” in August 2021 in Virginia
- People who had already been working on related initiatives-improving security around the ballot box, analyzing election data for potential anomalies, or pushing for election integrity legislation-found others scattered across Virginia working on similar things, and quickly fused into local work groups called Election Integrity Task Forces and began collaborating on projects on a county basis
The Republican National Committee (RNC):
- The RNC, the powerhouse and teller machine of Republican initiatives, was legally barred from organizing and sponsoring ballot security operations like poll watching from 1982 to 2018, due to a 1982 consent decree issued by Dickinson R. Debevoise.
- After the consent decree expired in 2018, the RNC began building infrastructure around election integrity projects.
The Movement Ripples
- By mid-2022, the Election Integrity Network held summits in eight battleground states-Virginia, Georgia, Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina-and mobilized thousands to start election integrity projects at the local level.
- The Virginia model was promptly replicated in other states.
The Bigger Picture: Uneven Playing Field
- The left has been building infrastructure around election administration and attempting to influence election outcomes with more effort and conviction than those of the right
- Evidence of this includes reports by Capital Research Center (CRC), which allege a "coordinated effort" by the left to influence elections via private donations and dark money networks
- Open Secrets estimated that $447 million of "dark money"-political donations with undisclosed sources-supported liberal groups at the federal level during the 2020 election cycle while only $190 million supported conservative groups
Something They Will Never Have
- Conservatives have something they will never have: an army of citizen patriots who love America, and are tirelessly dedicated to becoming an integral part of the election process at every local election office in the nation-who are intent upon saving and preserving our Constitutional Republic-that is the mission of the Election Integrity Network.
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