Veterans, Law Enforcement Team Up to Volunteer as Poll Workers in Election Integrity Initiative

Virginia residents vote at the Fairfax County Government Center in Fairfax, Va., on Nov. 02, 2021. Win McNamee/Getty Images

A group of military and law enforcement veterans who have vowed to protect the Constitution no matter who is commander-in-chief is trying to recruit 30,000 poll workers and poll watchers for the 2022 midterm elections.

The effort comes despite attempts by groups and the media to portray conservative groups supplying poll workers and poll watchers as “organizations with nefarious intent” to interfere in the election and cause doubt about the results, in the words of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s election task force.

Politico, in an article published this week, quoted David Levine, election integrity expert at the German Marshal Fund, as saying that there is a “comprehensive effort by purveyors of election myths and disinformation to try and sabotage future U.S. elections.”

But the organizers at One More Mission, a group looking for military and law enforcement veterans to help with poll working and poll watching, dismissed such allegations.

“They’re planting the seeds right now to call into question the election, which is ironic, considering that they have been launching disinformation campaigns about how the right believes that [the previous election] was fixed,” said Kyle Reyes, executive director of Law Enforcement Today (LET).

LET, Warfighter Overwatch, Alpha Elite, Performance Outdoors, Heroes Media Group, and The National Coalition of Frontline Workers have joined together to help recruit people “to ensure the staging and oversight of free and fair elections now and in the future,” said the group in a statement.

Recruitment Drive

The organizations are recruiting people via social influencers and boots on the ground in the veteran and law enforcement community, and emails to their networks asking for volunteers for both poll watching and poll working, said the group’s organizers.

They also have materials going to Veteran of Foreign Wars, American Legions, and other military veteran auxiliaries.

“And Law Enforcement Today is a partner, so they'll be pushing it hard starting next week,” said Reyes.

Social media recruitment is also happening, said Reyes, but noted it wasn’t a main channel “because all things election integrity seem to get shadow banned on social media.”

Poll workers include elections officers and volunteers who assist voters, and are typically employed by the government. Poll workers’ voting affiliation plays no part in their duties. Poll watchers, meanwhile, tend to be partisan observers, associated with a political party, campaign or civic groups, and are there to make sure there are no problems with the process.

Each state has its own requirements for poll workers, which for most states includes certified training. The qualifications for poll watching are a little looser, and also varies by state.

Reyes said that the campaign wanted to provide a practical solution to a political problem that has left people divided, and some not trusting recent election results.

“All of my friends and my family who were enlisted [in the military] they didn’t take an oath to a Democrat president or Republican president: They took an oath to serve, protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States,” said Reyes, adding that if we trust those people with our national defense and our safety and security, we can trust them to work in elections.

Conservatives Playing Catch-Up

Conservatives have argued that for decades, the Democrats have done a good job installing their own poll workers in big urban centers in swing states. The Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA) has pointed to Detroit, Michigan, as one example, where Democrat poll workers have outmatched Republicans by as much as 32-to-one.

“Democratic election workers severely outnumber Republican election workers in practically every large urban area,” the RNLA said in a June statement.

“For example, just 170 of more than 5,400 Detroit election officials were Republicans in 2020. Voters cannot have faith in elections when 97% of poll workers belong to one party,” the group added.

Conservatives are playing catch-up in states like Michigan, where the election will be decided by thin margins statewide by precincts in which one party dominates the poll working.

One Republican integrity election worker told The Epoch Times that doubters from the left can simply look at the success of the GOP’s poll watching and working operation in the 2021 Virginia elections as proof that Republican poll watchers add to election trust.

That election, despite coming down to the wire, was controversy-free.

“It was a tremendous success,” Christine Brim, an election integrity trainer with the Fairfax, Virginia GOP told the Epoch Times.

“We only had a handful of incidents during the election, and those were mostly about masks,” added Brim.

Brim said the program covered about 90 percent of the polling shifts statewide with poll-watchers who had to complete lengthy training sessions and sign a code of conduct that included following lawful procedures.

“They are trained to observe, report, and escalate. If something is wrong, take it to the lawyers and let them deal with it,” said Brim of the system in Virginia, which is being rolled out nationally this year.

Non-Partisan

One military veteran who served in the Navy as a corpsman, training in special operations with the Marine Corps, said that the whole purpose of One More Mission is to get rid of partisan fear and restore the trust of the American people in elections.

“So this is regardless of your political affiliation, regardless of your views on any portion of the right or left side,” veteran Tony Sabio told The Epoch Times.

Sabio was recently featured in People Magazine after he helped a teenage boy escape war-ravaged Ukraine.

“We’re looking just to stabilize the elections based upon the Constitution, making sure that we bring integrity back to elections, honor back to elections, trust back to elections on both sides of the aisle,” he said.

Sabio didn’t disclose his voting affiliation, but said he grew up in a Democrat household and believes in some Democrat policies—but in the military, the only color they know is green.

Military people, he said, are comfortable operating as non-political people in politically-charged situations.

“We’re coming in as an unbiased third party, no affiliation, and really coming from our roots in the military dealing with protecting the Constitution and the freedom of free elections, trying to protect that and protect the rights of every individual to their opinions and their agreements and even their disagreements,” said Sabio, who was in the military in 2005 when they helped administer the first democratic elections in Iraq since 1958.

Such experience, combined with the organizing skills honed by military and law enforcement over the years make veterans uniquely qualified for the task of restoring confidence in elections in an unobtrusive way.

“I mean, everybody who participates in the election has something to add to ensuring election confidence. It’s not just the poll watchers’ responsibility. It’s also watching the poll workers too,” said Reyes.

“So for us, we don’t care how people vote if you vote Democrat or Republican. We don’t care what team you’re playing for. We just want every team to have the same equal chance of winning that game,” he added.