STERLING, Va. — A crowd of Republican attorneys, voters and poll watchers piled into a classroom as Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley took the podium.
“Protect the Vote” signs lined the walls of the room in West Springfield Governmental Center for an election integrity training as Whatley stressed the importance of securing the vote in Virginia.
A crowd of roughly 50 Virginians attended the July 24 training, where they were briefed on the different roles they could play in the 2026 midterms and how to apply for those positions.
A little more than a year out from the midterm elections, the RNC is ramping up its efforts to help Republicans maintain their majority in the House and Senate. The election integrity training in the heart of northern Virginia is just the beginning of those efforts, Whatley told the Daily Caller in an exclusive interview.
“As we go into 2026, it’s building on what we built in ’24 and really through expanding the map,” Whatley told the Caller.
Whatley said the party will be focusing on Senate races in Georgia, North Carolina, Maine, Michigan and Kentucky. There are critical congressional seats they will be paying attention to as well, including in deep blue states like New York and California.
But above all, it’s about building on the momentum created in 2024.
For nearly 40 years, the GOP was subject to a 1982 consent decree, which was enacted following a lawsuit from the Democratic National Committee, that neutered the party’s ability to engage in election integrity lawsuits. The decree was lifted in 2018.
The party first began diving into the election integrity realm in 2022, an official told the Caller last year. By 2024, the election integrity division became an official department that included communications, politics, and legal arms, the Caller previously reported.
In the 2024 election cycle, the RNC filed more than 100 election integrity lawsuits across 20 states, according to the party’s website. The GOP recruited 230,000 volunteers and 6,500 lawyers, Whatley told the Caller, who personally stood by on election day and addressed issues across the country.
Since Trump won in November, the party has moved to ramp up its election integrity efforts. Specifically, the GOP has
probed states to clean up their voter rolls. With that project underway, this year the party has a larger legal budget for election integrity issues, Whatley told the Caller.
“We need to be working with different state parties than we necessarily worked with in the past. We need to make sure that we expand this out and have the boots on the ground for election integrity in every one of those states,” Whatley told the Caller.
“What we’re doing right now is we’re building that program in Virginia, in New Jersey because of the governor races and the legislative races that we have here. Very, very important for us to make sure that we’ve got the system in place,” Whatley told the Caller.
At Thursday’s training session, a GOP Election Integrity staffer gave an hour-long presentation to the attendees, stressing the need for more volunteers to counteract the number of volunteers the Democrats have been able to secure.
Most of the training was spent informing attendees on what qualifies them to be poll workers, poll watchers and other election-related officials. The RNC official also told attendees of a new rule that allows high school students who recently turned 18 to become poll workers.
The official also encouraged attendees to be either a poll watcher or poll worker during early voting periods and then swap roles on Election Day. Many attendees scanned the QR sign-up link provided during the presentation to sign up for the application process.
Following the presentation, several attendees enthusiastically asked questions, traded stories and connected with each other. Some, who were already poll watchers, stood up and stressed how important it was for those in the room to join their efforts, repeating that they desperately needed more volunteers because the Democratic party often has more people involved.
Others shared stories of suspicious behavior at polling locations that they either witnessed or heard about, which inspired them to attend the training.
It’s that concern among Republican voters that is the crux of the RNC’s election integrity effort.
“I can tell you that every single event that I go to anywhere in the country, if we do a Q&A, one of the first questions that I get asked is about election integrity,” Whatley told the Caller. “Every single time, every place we go, it continues to be a very top-tier issue.”
“So we’re going to make sure that we’re in a position that we’re leading this fight, and we’re being seen as leading this fight,” Whatley added, stressing that communicating the work the party has done helps give Americans the confidence to vote.
The RNC’s election integrity work has the full backing of President Donald Trump, Whatley told the Caller, adding that the Department of Justice has also been instrumental in helping with its efforts.
“To the degree that we can provide information or we can provide support for what they’re doing, we want to do that,” Whatley told the Caller.
Whatley said having former RNC member Harmeet Dhillon as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights “is absolutely fantastic.” He also celebrated Dave Warrington, who is now White House Counsel, but was the RNC’s lead attorney during the 2024 Trump campaign.
“There’s a lot of effort around the country right now to make sure that we’re ready,” Whatley said.
AUTHOR
White House Correspondent
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