Bloomberg Government: Lawmakers Ramp Up Election Observer Efforts Ahead of Midterms
By Torrence Banks
Lawmakers from both parties are moving forward with efforts to deploy election observers ahead of the November midterms amid growing concerns about the democratic process.
The House Administration Committee, led by Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), is preparing to deploy staffers to the field as part of its long-running election observers program. Meanwhile, Senate Democrats have launched their own program and are in the process of recruiting volunteers as they accuse President Donald Trump of attempting to subvert the results.
The programs coincide with similar efforts conducted by the federal government and the main political party organizations, and underscore the expanding role members of Congress are playing in election administration as mistrust over the process grows.
“I think more eyes on the process lead to more trust in the process, more transparency,” said Caleb Hays, former general counsel and deputy staff director for the House Administration Committee, who worked for Republicans on the panel, in an interview in July.
Rep. Joe Morelle (N.Y.), the top Democrat on the administration panel, asked lawmakers last week to encourage their staff to volunteer for the election observers program, a senior Democratic aide said Friday in a statement.
Morelle’s appeal came after he issued a warning about the program earlier this summer during a hearing, arguing that the committee deployed certain observers during the 2024 election cycle without notifying Democrats.
Senate Democrats are also touting their own program, which they unveiled in June. Last week, the office of Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) — the ranking member on the Rules and Administration Committee who’s helping spearhead the program — told reporters that staffers who volunteer will be deployed to the field to observe the entire election process, including the tabulation and certification of votes. It wasn’t yet clear how many volunteers would be expected to participate or how many states they would be deployed to.
Padilla’s office added that it has held discussions with Republicans and expects them to participate in the program, which is modeled closely on the House’s version.
Decades-Old Program
The House Election Observers Program dates back decades. A 2024 law, the Confirmation of Congressional Observers Act (Public Law 118-106), requires congressional observers deployed by both chambers be offered unrestricted access to election sites.
Each election cycle, the House panel can send observers to different voting locations to monitor aspects of the election process, such as voting and ballot tabulation. Observers document information and return it to the committee so members can create a record in case an election is contested, a process the committee typically oversees.
Panel members decide where to send observers and dispatch them to polling locations in bipartisan pairs.
But Democrats such as Morelle have raised concerns about the program this cycle.
“There is the ongoing effort by the president to subvert elections and to continue to try to whittle away at the confidence of the American people in American elections and the system,” Morelle said last month in an interview. “And when they continue to do things like this, that just adds fuel to that fire, which is unjustified.”
Steil defended the program, saying Republicans “learned a lesson” after House Democrats opened an investigation into a state-certified election in Iowa in 2020 in which Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa) narrowly won.
Steil told reporters in July that “the lesson learned is we would be best served if we had individuals on the ground during the election to be fact observers in preparation for the trial.” He added that the program is being implemented “completely appropriately to make sure that we have election observers in key locations.”
While the committee hasn’t discussed which races observers will be sent to, Steil said the program will be run the same as in 2024.
“When a candidate makes a request for an observer, the Committee strives to send a staffer to observe that race,” the House Administration spokesperson said in a July 27 statement. “The minority has full authority to deploy staff to the same race, and oftentimes they do. The program is not connected to political party observer programs.”
Growing Concerns
Trump’s comments about the validity of the 2020 presidential election have fueled concerns over election security. The Senate Democrats’ program also arrives at a time when Republicans have been pushing the SAVE America Act, a voter identification and proof-of-citizenship bill that critics argue would prevent Americans from being able to vote.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement on July 31 that the chamber’s new program will be a bulwark against Trump’s attempts to “threaten fair elections.”
“If Democrats really cared about securing our elections, they would pass the SAVE America Act which includes commonsense election integrity measures supported by the vast majority of Americans,” Lauren Bis, spokesperson for the White House, said in a statement responding to Democrats’ comments.
Michael McNulty, policy director at Issue One, a bipartisan election reform group, said in an interview on July 28 he’s troubled that the information collected by the House observers could be “spun” by Republicans if the program is used similarly to 2024.
“It creates a partisan perception that these observers are being sent to places where the Republicans might want to use it for different purposes than just pure transparency and accountability,” McNulty said.
Other election observers will be in the field as well. The Republican National Committee plans to deploy people in 22 states on Election Day, an RNC official said in a statement Tuesday. The Democratic National Committee plans to “deploy tens of thousands of observers across the country” in November, according to spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández.
Hays, the former House Administration staff member, contends the panel’s program serves an important purpose despite the concerns.
He said “the chamber needs to be certain that the person who shows up claiming to be elected” is “the person who was elected.”
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