Conservative Group Training for Election Integrity: We Can’t Be a Society That ‘Don’t Trust the Outcome of the Election’

DALLAS, TX—Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas at the Hilton Anatole Aug. 6, 2022. Bobby Sanchez for The Epoch Times

As midterm elections close in, grassroots organizations are ramping up election integrity efforts, with conservative advocacy group Tea Party Patriots Action (TPPA) training more than 7,500 people on related issues in multiple states.

“What we’ve been doing for the last year at this point is training people to start local- or county-level election integrity task forces,” Jenny Beth Martin, honorary chairwoman of TPP Action, said in an interview with NTD. “Right now as we head into the election, the most important thing for them to be working on is recruiting poll watchers and, where localities are working to still hire people to work the elections, hiring poll workers as well.”

When asked as to why there is such an emphasis on election integrity for the upcoming November midterms, Martin pointed out that a general distrust of election results has been building over the last decade.

In 2016 and 2018, it was Democrats who distrusted and contested the election results, while in the 2020 presidential race, there was unprecedented distrust on the Republican side.

“We can’t be a society where we just go, ‘Oh, yeah, cheating happens, no big deal, it always happens in every election,’ or be okay with the fact that we don’t trust the outcome of the election,” Jenny said.

To restore the people’s faith in elections, citizens need to exercise their rights, she said. People can become poll watchers and observe the election, ensure that only individuals registered to vote in a given location cast their vote, and volunteer to help out election workers.

Citizen oversight such as poll watchers is what “puts the guardrails” in place to make sure that elections in America run honestly and transparently, she stated.

Ensuring Election Integrity

Though states have come a long way since 2020 to ensure election integrity, more needs to be done, according to Hans von Spakovsky, a Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow and manager of its election law reform initiative.

In a ranking of states based on election integrity, the Heritage Foundation found that not a single state scored over 90 out of the maximum score of 100.

“Tennessee is No. 1, but it only got 84 out of 100,” Von Spakovsky told The Epoch Times. “Even the best state in the country needs to make improvements.”

Tennessee was followed by Georgia, Alabama, and Missouri. The four states that scored worst in election integrity were Hawaii, Nevada, California, and Oregon.

Janel Brandtjen, a Republican state Assemblywoman from Wisconsin, is worried that not enough has been done to make sure that the midterm election is free from the prevalence of integrity issues seen in 2020.

In an interview with The Epoch Times, she pointed out that people are still able to register, get a ballot, and vote for the midterms before their identity and address are verified by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, a measure required by law.

In addition, people who use the state’s same-day registration law are not subject to instantaneous identity checks. “There remains continuing opportunity for bad actors to take advantage of this and other security vulnerabilities in the balloting process,” she said.