'Watch them like hawks': Trump asks backers to become election workers

Donald Trump has spent years railing against state-level voting operations, targeting vote-by-mail options and spreading conspiracy theories about rigged results in battleground states.

This week, the presumptive 2024 Republican White House nominee doubled down on his election falsehoods and announced his campaign will lead a "historic effort" with the Republican National Committee and GOP state parties "to ensure that what happened in 2020 will never happen again."

The former president's latest comments came during his Wednesday campaign rally in Michigan, a critical swing state that Trump traveled to during a day off from his New York criminal trial over allegations surrounding payments to an adult film star to keep her quiet about an affair before the 2016 presidential election. Turning to the integrity of the 2024 election that Trump is trying to win to return to the White House, the Republican sought to portray Democrats as incompetent at anything but rigging elections and repeated false claims that votes were illegally counted the first time he faced off against now-President Joe Biden.

"We're going to watch them like hawks," Trump said.

It wasn't just Trump who was personally talking about the push on Wednesday.

At the Michigan rally, flyers that read “Election Workers Needed” with a QR code to sign up hung on portable toilets set up for the crowd. The screens behind Trump directed his supporters to “Protect the Vote,” a reference to the Republican National Committee’s election integrity initiative.

Pete Hoekstra, chair of the Michigan GOP, also reiterated calls for supporters to volunteer as poll workers during a speech introducing the ex-president.

The actions appear to be part of the push between the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee to mobilize more than 100,000 volunteers in swing states to monitor ballot counts and prevent fraud.

“I've not done a deep dive into that but it seems like a pretty serious effort to me," Hoekstra, a former Trump-appointed U.S. ambassador and the ex-chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, later told the USA TODAY NETWORK about the initiative. "It looks like a very, very serious effort to me and well beyond, 'Hey, can you be a poll watcher on Election Day."

But some have criticized the initiative as sparking potential voter intimidation. Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer described Trump as "a danger to the Constitution and a threat to our democracy," in a response to the comments.

The now-defunct House select committee that was tasked with investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol collected testimony from former Trump aides who said the former president's fans acted that day because they believed it’s what the then-president wanted them to do following Biden's 2020 election win.

Trump now describes many of the people now in prison for their Jan. 6 acts as “patriots” and has said he would pardon them if reelected.

The ex-president is also facing election interference charges brought by the Justice Department and has been accused of attempting to arrange a fake slate of electors in Michigan, Arizona and other battleground states in 2020. He's also been criminally charged in Georgia for his efforts in the Peach State following the 2020 election. In each of his criminal cases, Trump has pleaded not guilty.

Trump has long raised suspicion about voting in America. In 2016, his presidential campaign website recruited poll watchers to "Help Me Stop Crooked Hillary From Rigging This Election! Trump's longtime political operative Roger Stone also led a controversial non-profit group called "Stop the Steal" that was aimed at raising questions about the outcome of a race that Trump ultimately ended up winning in one of the biggest political upsets in U.S. history.

In his 2024 campaign, Trump has continued to spread false claims that seek to cast doubt about the security of American elections, while launching efforts aimed at combatting unsubstantiated instances of fraud.

Alongside House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Trump recently promoted legislation to prevent noncitizens from voting, which is already illegal in federal elections.

In an interview with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Wednesday, Trump did not commit to accepting the results of Wisconsin's 2024 election if he loses.

He instead offered a similar answer to when he was asked the same question ahead of the 2020 election he now refuses to accept: "If everything's honest.”

Contributing: Erin Mansfield, Molly Beck, Alison Dirr USA TODAY NETWORK

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Donald Trump asks his backers to become election workers