RNC chair Ronna McDaniel says 'nobody should be intimidating' voters but defends poll watchers who are 'simply observing'
Rachel Wisniewski/Washington Post
- Ronna McDaniel said "nobody should be intimidating" voters following reports of intimidation in multiple states.
- She added that "poll watching is not intimidating" after the RNC recruited thousands of observers.
- Election-denier groups helped recruit poll watchers who want to ban electronic vote counters, Reuters reported.
Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, said "nobody should be intimidating" voters following reports of voter intimidation across multiple states.
On CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday morning, host Dana Bash asked McDaniel about reports of armed individuals monitoring a ballot drop box in Arizona and a Reuters report about officials tracking over a dozen cases of potential voter intimidation.
"Well, nobody should be intimidating or breaking the law. Nobody should. But poll watching is not intimidating," McDaniel said. "This isn't happening from the RNC. We send out guidance to our poll watchers."
She added: "But if you have been at a poll place, you see they're just simply observing. And it helps us at the end to give assurance to the voters to say, 'Listen, we were there. We watched it. It went well.'"
—CNN (@CNN) November 6, 2022
The chairwoman said the RNC has been recruiting poll watchers and issued a warning that they shouldn't be "intimidated" either.
"Do not attack or intimidate people who are trying to vote," McDaniel said. "Also, don't intimidate our poll watchers, because we're having that right now too, where our poll watchers are not being allowed to meaningfully observe. That's an important part of our democracy."
Some of the groups that maintain the 2020 presidential election was stolen have helped recruit thousands of poll observers, many of whom have advocated for banning electronic vote counters, Reuters reported. In the May primary in North Carolina's Henderson Country, aggressive poll observers demanded to inspect electronic voting machines and take pictures inside voting stations, the outlet reported. Officials called the police after one poll watcher followed a poll worker's car.