The Republican National Committee sued election officials in Milwaukee on Monday, one day before the election, over allegations they have been unlawfully limiting poll watchers in at least three polling locations.
RNC attorneys wrote in a complaint that the deep-blue city’s Election Commission limited the number of poll watchers permitted in Serb Hall, Good Hope Library, and Capitol Drive Voting Center to two or four per location during early voting.
“Space for observers was arbitrarily limited,” the attorneys wrote, adding that the facilities “can accommodate far more observers” than what the commission permitted.
Poll watching in most states, including Wisconsin, is governed by state law. It typically involves the state granting access to a set number of designated Republican and Democratic poll watchers to observe voters at polling places on Election Day and watch over the ballot counting process.
In Wisconsin, a top battleground in 2024, poll-watching rules are less restrictive than in other swing states, as they do not require the watchers to have been recruited by a political party or candidate. However, as the RNC attorneys noted, election officials should, according to state law, make their best efforts to give poll watchers from both parties balanced representation where possible.
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The RNC attorneys said drastically limiting poll watchers down to two per site increases the possibility of fraud.
“When access is arbitrarily restricted to two persons, it opens the door to fraudulent claims of party affiliation so as to ‘freeze out’ one or the other major party,” the attorneys wrote.
Election Commission Chairman Terrell Martin did not respond to a request for comment.
Poll watchers and workers have long been a pillar of the election process for both major political parties, but the jobs, which are typically filled by volunteers, have become a source of lawsuits amid a heavily litigated election season.
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Republicans unsuccessfully argued in a lawsuit in Fulton County, Georgia, last month that an election director ignored the vast majority of Republican poll worker applications and instead turned to a third-party company to provide temp workers. Missouri’s Republican secretary of state sued the Department of Justice on Monday over claims it was inappropriately sending poll monitors to observe voting activity in St. Louis.
Republicans also claimed over the weekend that Fulton County election workers were inappropriately shutting out poll watchers at a handful of election offices. RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said the problem was later rectified.