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Election 2024
Cari Spencer and Estelle Timar-Wilcox

GOP’s Protect the Vote tour stops in Minnesota to recruit election judges, challengers

two voting places
A polling place at Matthews Park in Minneapolis on Super Tuesday primary day in March.
Kerem Yucel | MPR News

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The Republican National Committee’s Protect the Vote tour stopped in Chaska this week.

Attendees heard from Republican party leaders and received training on election laws. The tour seeks to recruit election judges and polling place observers across the country.

“We believe when every legal vote is counted — and only legal votes are counted — Donald Trump will win,” RNC co-chair Lara Trump told reporters at the event. “If we have a free, fair and transparent election, we, of course, will respect the results.”

On the campaign trail, former President Donald Trump has vacillated between saying he accepts the results of the 2020 election and calling them into question.

Officials in Minnesota and nationwide have found claims of widespread voter fraud in 2020 to be false.

In an interview with MPR News on Thursday, Secretary of State Steve Simon said he welcomes volunteers from both sides of the aisle, adding the state needs 30,000 of them and that the state is required to have a balanced mix of political affiliations at each polling place.

“My philosophy is, whoever wants to recruit someone to be an election judge, that’s entirely proper — as long as anyone who does that job follows the rules,” Simon said.

“And the rules are: You have to leave your politics at the door. And you literally swear an oath when you do that job to fairly and impartially help administer elections on Election Day. As long as they can do that and faithfully follow the law, I think that’s a good thing,” he said.

Simon said polling place observers — called challengers in Minnesota — are also welcome if they follow strict guidelines. He said each party can designate one person in writing. That person cannot speak to voters, must stand more than six feet away from them, and can only challenge a voter’s eligibility based on personal knowledge.

“So it can’t be a vibe, or a whim, or a hunch or a bad feeling that someone is or isn’t eligible to vote, or is or isn’t doing something wrong,” Simon said. “It has to be based on personal knowledge, and so that has kept order in our polling places. It’s why we have very, very few instances of disruption in our polling places, and that’s a good thing.”

While the parties recruit election day volunteers, Simon is preparing the state’s voting machines. His office held a public voting equipment test Friday in Dakota County, ahead of Tuesday’s primary.