Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Whatley said the Republican Party is working “aggressively” to ensure states conduct secure elections for the upcoming November 5 general election.
Whatley said the RNC has filed 96 election-related lawsuits across the country to ensure the upcoming election is conducted in the most secure way possible. This includes cleaning up states’ voter rolls, preventing illegal immigrants from voting, and enforcing voter identification requirements.
“We need to have the laws, the rules, the regulations in place before voting starts to protect the election. We are working right now across the country with legislators, with governors, with boards of elections, with secretaries of state to make sure that the rules of the road are the right rules of the road,” Whatley (pictured above) said on Friday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
“We want only Americans to vote. It is the law of the land, but states need to enforce it. We want voter ID. We want to make sure that where we have mail in balloting, that we have basic protections in place. Things like a signature requirement, a witness requirement. Those ballots have got to go in a mailbox, not a drop box, and we want them in before Election Day. We want states to clean up their voter rolls. So we’re working right now, aggressively, across the country. We filed 96 lawsuits as of yesterday across the country to get the rules of the road in place,” Whatley added.
When it comes specifically to preventing illegal immigrants from voting in the election, Whatley said the RNC is working with law enforcement agencies and state attorneys general to “get the message out” to the population of illegal immigrants of deportation if they were to vote illegally.
“It is illegal for a noncitizen to participate in our elections. It is absolutely the law of the land in all 50 states. But we need every state to enforce the law. We are working very aggressively right now with secretaries of state, with attorneys general, with sheriffs and law enforcement officers across the country to put out a very simple word: If you participate illegally in these elections, we are going to find you. We’re going to catch you and we will deport you. I think that it is absolutely critical to get that message out there. But it’s also critical for every state to enforce the law and not allow these people to vote,” Whatley said.
Aside from ensuring states enforce laws through litigation, Whatley stressed the importance of the Republican Party’s presence inside polling stations to ensure ballots are counted and handled appropriately in real-time.
“We’ve got to be in the room. We need observers and attorneys in every room where votes are being cast and counted. That way, if there is an issue, we are on the ground, we can flag it and we can work on it right away rather than waiting until after the election and not having the ability to do anything about it,” Whatley explained.
Whatley encouraged Republicans to visit the website protectthevote.com to become trained volunteers, stump for GOP candidates before the November 5 election, and be present at polling places to deter illegal activity.
“We’re trying to recruit and train 100,000 volunteers – 5,000 of them in every battleground state. We’re trying to recruit attorneys and make sure that we’re going to have that presence everywhere a vote is being cast or counted,” Whatley said.
Watch the full interview:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Michael Whatley” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
