Lawsuit: RNC Claims Detroit Hired Seven Times More Democrat than Republican Poll Workers

The Republican National Committee (RNC) is accusing Detroit, Michigan’s election commission of hiring more Democrat than Republican poll workers as the presidential election approaches.

The RNC has slapped the Election Commission of the City of Detroit with a lawsuit that alleges officials broke state law by hiring over seven times more Democrats than Republicans for those roles, Fox News reported on Friday.

The outlet continued:

Michigan requires that the board of election commissioners “shall appoint an equal number, as nearly as possible, of election inspectors in each election precinct from each major political party,” according to Section 168.74 of the state’s election law.

However, the city of Detroit hired about 2,300 Democratic poll workers and only about 300 Republican election inspectors for the state’s 2024 primary election, according to the Detroit Election Commission Report cited in the lawsuit.

In a statement to Fox News, RNC Chairman Michael Whatley and Co-Chair Lara Trump stated, “Detroit’s failure to hire Republican poll workers is the kind of bad-faith Democrat interference that drives down faith in elections.”

It is important to note that the RNC and Trump campaign recently surpassed 150,000 poll watchers and workers after setting a goal of 100,000 for their election integrity program, according to Breitbart News:

The RNC and Trump campaign announced the launch of the massive election integrity program earlier in 2024, describing it as the “most extensive and monumental election integrity program in the nation’s history.”

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Every battleground state will have an election integrity hotline, and with that comes poll watching, which is a massive part of the program. Along with this comes “comprehensive training sessions” every month on election monitoring. In fact, in late July, the GOP celebrated 100 days until the election by holding a nationwide election integrity training event.

In September 2022, the RNC criticized the cities of Kalamazoo and Flint, Michigan, once city leaders appointed significantly fewer Republican election inspectors than Democrats, Breitbart News reported at the time.

“Under Michigan law, local election commissions must hire an equal number of Republican and Democrat poll workers. However, Kalamazoo and Flint officials significantly deviated from this requirement,” the outlet said.

The case is Republican National Committee v. Election Commission of the City of Detroit in the Michigan Circuit Court for the County of Wayne.