In a new interview with podcaster Lex Fridman, former President Donald Trump admitted he lost the 2020 election “by a whisker.” This after years of insisting the election was rigged, despite a lack of evidence to support that claim.
Questions about election integrity continue to swirl and that could have a big impact in 2024. According to an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll that came out late last year, only about a third of Republicans say they have “a great deal” or “quite a bit of” trust in the election process. Compare that with 72% of Democrats who said they do have faith in the system.
But casting aspersions on the process might prove to be a double-edged sword for the Republicans. Recently, Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley was in Orange County and talked about several Congressional districts in Southern California that Republicans have a strong shot of winning.
“If 1% of the public doesn’t believe in the sanctity of the election and stay home, we will lose,” he added.
The RNC has set a goal of recruiting 5,000 volunteers to monitor elections in every battleground state and say they’ve recruited roughly 165,000 people nationwide. California is not considered a battleground state, and yet the statewide Republican Party is also working to enlist help with the election. To date, they say, 11,000 folks have heeded the call. The Republicans are hoping these volunteers can help monitor ballot collection and processing.
Republicans also are trying to encourage mail-in voting, something Trump has repeatedly condemned in the past.
“We need to beat Democrats at their own game,” California GOP Chair Jessica Millan Patterson said, “We cannot be out there and let the Democrats run the score up on us for three quarters of the game and we just show up on Election Day.”
Transparency also is crucial to those who oversee elections. In fact, the LA County Registrar of Voters set up a live feed of their new ballot processing center in the City of Industry to do just that.
“The process belongs to the electorate, it doesn’t belong to us,” Registrar Dean Logan said.
Logan said he has been dismayed by the abuse election workers across the country have faced in recent years. A study by the nonprofit Issue One found that across 11 western states, more than 160 top election officials have left their post since 2020 because of threats and harassment.
But Logan also takes heart in the belief that LA County residents have confidence in the process. He explained that after every election, they conduct a voter survey and the one they took back in March of this year shows that 83 % of voters said they had a positive experience.
“Ninety-six percent say they trust the information that’s coming from about the elections process, so that gives us some hope,” he added.
