Lara Trump, RNC Recruit Army of Pennsylvania Poll Watchers

Lara Trump and her team at the Republican National Committee plan to build "an army" of poll watchers to ensure election integrity, she told a crowd of supporters just outside Philadelphia on Tuesday.

"We want to have an army of people across this country, 100,000 people strong, to ensure integrity in our elections," said Lara Trump, RNC co-chair and the former president's daughter-in law.

"We from the RNC have put in place an incredible election integrity program. This is unlike anything we've ever done before and it is to ensure free, fair, and transparent elections," she told an audience in Newtown, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Capital-Star reported.

"Not only are we training people to be poll watchers, we can train people to be poll workers, to actually work in the tabulation centers where the mail-in ballots come in."

The issue of ballot integrity is something that Trump and RNC Chair Michael Whatley have said is a top priority under their leadership.

In March, Whately said the RNC "will be focused like a laser on getting out the vote and protecting the ballot." Earlier this month, the RNC launched the "Swamp the Vote" initiative to promote the use of absentee and mail-in ballots and early in-person voting.

Last week at a Turning Point Action event in Michigan, Lara Trump assured the young Republican audience that the RNC was ready to go after any election cheaters in 2024.

"We are also sending a loud and clear message out there to anyone who thinks about cheating in an election: We will find you, we will track you down, and we will prosecute you to the full extent of the law," she said.

President Joe Biden won Pennsylvania in 2020, but Republicans would like win the swing state's 19 electoral votes. Prior to Donald Trump's surprise 2016 victory in Pennsylvania, Republicans hadn't won Pennsylvania since 1988, when the state voted for George H.W. Bush.

Whatley, who also noted the importance of having RNC representatives "in the room" to assure fairness, cited his experience working as an attorney during the 2000 recount in Florida.

"If we had not had the 400-plus attorneys that we had down there, we would be talking about President [Al] Gore, not President [George W.] Bush," Whatley said. "It has absolutely stuck with me since that day how important it is for us to be in the room."