If the 2020 election taught the Republican National Committee anything, it was that in a new world of drop-boxes and ballot harvesting, they needed to rethink how they play the game.

And if the 2024 election proved anything, it was that going big on election integrity and working with third-party groups to turn out votes worked.

After 2020, nearly two-thirds of Republicans and Trump voters said they had little faith votes were counted accurately, according to one poll. That year, in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of election laws were changed and others were completely ignored in key swing states. Thanks to Democrat super lawyer Marc Elias, voters could use ballot drop-boxes, mail-in voting and early voting in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona to cast their vote.

When Lara Trump and Michael Whatley took over the RNC in March, their mission was clear: The party would go all-in on election integrity.

“When we came in, we said, all right, this is really what we’re going to do with pretty much all of our time. We said the RNC is sort of trying to be too many things at once, and if you’re trying to do everything, all the time for everybody, you really are going to miss the bigger picture,” Lara Trump, co-chairwoman of the RNC, told the Daily Caller.

The new leaders of the RNC believed that bolstering their election integrity department would in turn help their ground game. Because of a recent FEC rule change, the party was now able to coordinate with grassroots organizations across the country. The campaign’s ground game in 2024 was untraditional and predominantly focused on targeting low-propensity voters.

What’s more: Americans who trust their votes will be counted accurately are more likely to actually turn out to cast a ballot.

Trump explained to the Caller that it was key that these low-propensity voters knew about the work of the election integrity department — that would give them the confidence to cast their vote and help drive them out to the polls.

“We had a meeting with the election integrity lawyers, and we said that we wanted to make this a very public pursuit,” Trump told the Caller. “Because that will be key in turning them out and giving them confidence in everything.”

From there the RNC’s election integrity initiative grew.

“We put together what we call the ‘Protect The Vote Tour,’ and Lara and I, along with Pam Bondi and Matt Whitaker, did 30 different events in 20 different states around the country to kind of raise awareness of the election integrity program and recruit volunteers,” Whatley told the Caller. The tour was able to help register 230,000 volunteers to serve as poll watchers and workers, as well as 6,500 grassroots attorneys.

A legal victory in Pennsylvania:

Centre County officials were planning to stop counting ballots throughout the night in violation of state law.

We threatened to sue — and that was enough. Officials agreed to continue the count as required.

Our attorneys will continue fighting…

— Michael Whatley (@ChairmanWhatley) November 6, 2024

Leading up to the election, that “Protect The Vote Tour” taught the hundreds of thousands of poll watchers how to identify something suspicious at polling locations. The poll watchers were then instructed to either contact the RNC lawyers or the election integrity war room who would work to instantly address the problem.

Trump told the Caller that the poll watchers identified around 20,000 tips, some of which were flagged through Twitter. If Trump or Whatley were tagged in something nefarious on election night, they would immediately send a poll watcher to the location to investigate.

In many cases on election night, the system worked.

“In Milwaukee, we had observers in the room and noticed that the security protocols had not been set up for one of the tabulators, which had already counted 30,000 votes. We were able to flag that issue, remove those ballots, get the security protocols in place and then rerun all of those ballots,” Whatley explained to the Caller.

🚨🚨🚨 Throughout the day we have been monitoring slow ballot counting in Milwaukee.

Now, our legal team has learned that the counting took place in unsecured conditions and the city now has to start over, wildly extending the counting timeline.

This is an unacceptable…

— Lara Trump (@LaraLeaTrump) November 5, 2024

Wins came across the country, including in key swing states. In Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, where polling locations were running low on ballot papers, the RNC was there to provide them with more. Across Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Republican poll watchers were being denied from polling locations. The RNC identified the problem, took legal action and got the poll watchers in the room.

Some legal victories extended past election day, and were instrumental in securing the Republican Senate majority.

Though outlets had called the Pennsylvania senatorial race for Republican Dave McCormick, Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey began to push for a recount. Bucks County Commissioners Diane Ellis-Marseglia and Robert Harvie then decided to allow undated and misdated ballots to be counted amid Casey’s fight.

NEW: @chairmanwhatley tells @dailycaller that the RNC is exploring whether Dem Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia could be held criminally liable for openly admitting to illegally counting ballots in the race between Casey and McCormick.

“We will pursue this to the fullest… https://t.co/KUiqULM0Kk

— Reagan Reese (@reaganreese_) November 18, 2024

The RNC immediately filed a lawsuit, suing all 67 county boards of elections in the state in an effort to block undated and misdated ballots from being counted. Shortly after, the state Supreme Court responded, ruling that ballots “shall not be counted for purposes of the election held” on Nov. 5, giving the RNC another win.

The news cycle has turned from election integrity to the Trump transition as the president-elect announces a slew of picks every week. But that hasn’t left the unit without direction or work to do.

One lawsuit the party filed is still in limbo, and it could have a monumental impact on how elections are conducted for years to come. In Mississippi, absentee ballots that are received after election day are able to be counted — nearly half the country allows it. The RNC sued in January and now expects the case to be brought to the Supreme Court.

“It might take a year, it might take two years, but that’s an RNC lawsuit that we were able to file that could literally change how elections in this country are running forever if the Supreme Court rules that ballots coming in after Election Day cannot be counted across the country,” an RNC official told the Caller.

“We will have righted a serious flaw in the American system for decades to come,” the official added.

Heading into an off-election year, the department is expected to size down slightly, but will be beefed back up for the midterms, Trump told the Caller. And while she’s being floated as a possible replacement for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and is stepping aside from her RNC role, Whatley, who told the Caller in November he would be running for reelection, has earned Trump’s endorsement to stay put.

To prepare for the next election cycle, Whatley told the Caller he has met with the House and Senate leadership team about how their initiative could continue to blossom.

“Our work is not done. We want to use the next year to go back into state legislatures, to talk to even Congress and the Senate about legislation that will really, truly formalize some of the things that we’re trying to get done in terms of election integrity, and get the rules of the road in more states where we need them to be,” Whatley told the Caller.

“I fully intend to continue this program and build on it,” he added.

AUTHOR

Reagan Reese

White House correspondent. Follow Reagan on Twitter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.