When Michael Whatley assumed control of the Republican National Committee last month, his marching orders were clear: Renew the party’s focus on “election integrity” — or, in GOP terms, file more lawsuits, install more right-wing election observers, and broadcast Donald Trump’s continued (and thoroughly debunked) claims of election fraud. Whatley, a hardcore election denier, was game. Within days, he’d outlined those priorities for RNC staffers in a three-page memo that emphasized voter outreach, ballot harvesting “where legal,” litigation over post-2020 election policies, and a push to hire and train slews of poll watchers.

“We must build and activate the most effective election integrity program that has ever existed to safeguard our elections,” he wrote. “We must also focus on voter turnout and early voting in order to win. Every tool that the other side has used, we need to wield for ourselves.”

Nothing like a good memo. (Photo by emiliezhang/Adobe Stock)

There are many problems with this plan. For starters, there’s the inconvenient fact that widespread voter fraud is not a thing. It is so not a thing that even the people hired by election deniers specifically to prove that it is a thing have been forced to admit that it is not, in fact, a thing. Far fewer are willing today to risk their reputations by insisting otherwise, which is good news for the country but bad news for a major political party seeking to reshape its entire identity around the myth of election fraud. Because the only people left to hire are the extremists, our national bureau reported.

“It’s one thing when fringe conspiracy theorists spread lies about elections,” said David Becker, an election administration expert who founded and runs the Center for Election Innovation and Research. “But it’s particularly disappointing to see a major political party give a platform to extremists whose testimony and statements have been found time and again to be false, and non-credible by the courts.”

The “election integrity” unit has embraced the fringe from the beginning under its lead counsel Christina Bobb, who parroted election fraud claims first as an anchor on the far-right One America News Network and then as part of Trump’s legal team. Her biggest claim to fame is, probably, signing an affidavit affirming that Trump had returned the classified documents he took from the White House, which were actually just sitting in various unlocked rooms at Mar-a-Lago, though she was also big on those state-level election “audits,” none of which uncovered widespread fraud. This is, one assumes, her dream job.

        PILLOWS! (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Bobb works alongside Christina Norton, a Florida GOP operative and the department’s director, who popped up to recruit volunteers at an April 4 online meeting hosted by a pair of Florida men best known for spouting anti-immigrant conspiracy theories on Steve Bannon’s podcast and also for their ties to My Pillow’s Mike Lindell, who is still ranting about the 2020 election despite owing $5 million to a guy who debunked his previous election-related rants. Also present at the online shindig was Seth Keshel, a retired Army officer who tours the country giving presentations about voter fraud based on vote totals that shift from year to year, a normal occurrence otherwise known as “voter turnout” that in no way indicates any type of fraud.

According to that “data,” and his own “quick count,” at least three states were hotbeds of fraudulent votes in 2020, he told the livestream audience — about 1,500 people — without providing evidence or even any actual data.

No one objected. No one even asked a question. The anti-fraud crowds almost never do, according to Jessica Marsden, a counsel at Protect Democracy.

“There’s this common thread of almost pseudo-science,” said Marsden. “These fraud theories have been totally debunked, but the aura of expertise that they bring to the effort seems to be seductive to some of these audiences.”

                                               One of these audiences, perhaps. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Which is troubling, she added.

“Lying about election fraud is dangerous, plain and simple,” she said. “Having a major political party sign on to those lies and lend them credibility is reckless and heightens the risk of violence affecting voters and the election.”

The plan is already in motion in states across the country, including Nevada, where the RNC and state GOP last month filed a lawsuit against five county officials and the secretary of state, alleging “inordinately high” voter registration rates in violation of a federal law requiring “clean” voter rolls. One of those officials was Carson City Clark-Recorder Scott Hoen, who was elected in 2022 after campaigning on election integrity. His platform included a pledge to maintain accurate voter registration lists, Stateline reported.

And he has, he said. Since taking office, Hoen and his staff have tried to keep that focus, using data from all levels of government to remove from the active list voters who have moved or died. The state agreed in its response to the lawsuit, saying the data used by Republicans were “highly flawed” and that the RNC’s analysis was like “comparing apples to orangutans.” Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers asserted without evidence that more than 1,500 dead Nevadans voted in 2020 and that an additional 42,000 in the state voted twice.

“Who knows where they got their numbers. But they didn’t consult me or ask me, or no one’s talked to me about what we do with voter roll maintenance,” said Hoen. “We do everything we can, per the law, to keep our voter rolls as plain as possible.”

                         A fairly plain ballot. (Photo by Gregory Bull/The Associated Press)

The case is just one example of the legal battles playing out in courtrooms across the country as Republicans and conservative activists seek to purge voter rolls of allegedly ineligible voters. The efforts have election experts worried about voter access and have prompted concerns from GOP operatives that the party is focusing too much of its time and resources on court battles rather than voter outreach,

“Republicans, by and large, have been caught flat-footed,” said Dennis Lennox, a Michigan-based Republican political consultant.“The party nationally and in many states is basically divided between those wanting to focus on so-called lawfare and those willing to adapt and accept the reality of campaigns and elections in 2024.”

Reality is no rosier for U.S. House Republicans, who returned Tuesday from a two-week recess to a slimmer majority and a looming leadership crisis of their own making, our D.C. bureau reported.

More specifically, the mess is courtesy of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who ruined everyone’s vacation vibes hours before recess by filing a motion to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican who’s been in the job all of five months. This was, Greene said at the time, “mostly for show,” which was a relief for … the country, really, given how things went the last time Republicans ousted their own speaker. Three Republicans have since left the House, so it would probably be even messier this time, according to such luminaries as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who predicted that a second floor fight would likely end with a Democratic speaker.

                      Mostly for show, usually. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Besides, there’s other stuff to do. The House’s to-do list includes renewing the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act and possibly, perhaps, maybe finally approving a long-stalled proposal to send additional foreign aid to conflicts in Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific. There’s also the small matter of the 2024 election, which seems likely to distract right-wing lawmakers who have no interest in governing and are thus easily distracted. Technically, Johnson doesn’t need their votes to do anything, as long as he’s willing to work with Democrats. But working with Democrats is how he wound up here in the first place, stuck between the same rock and hard place most recently vacated by former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

It’s possible Democrats could rescue him, said Matt Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University. But it may be less cruel to let him go.

“You know, retaining your speakership because you’re saved by the opposition party is not exactly a great place to be, right?” Dallek said. “This is a continuation of the tumult that really began when the Republicans took power.”