INTERVIEW: Why It Wasn't Like Last Time

The 2024 election ran smoothly in the Rust Belt battleground state cities of Milwaukee, Detroit, and Philadelphia thanks to increased preparation by the Trump campaign’s legal team and scrutiny of the 2020 presidential election’s irregularities. This likely scared away potential fraudsters who understood the Right would not sit idly by while election workers in a few dark blue cities destroy democracy before their eyes.

Lisa Dixon, executive director of the Center for Election Confidence, told Restoration News in an exclusive interview that absentee ballot processing at Huntington Place in Detroit—the new name for the infamous TCF Center—ran phenomenally well. Absentee ballot processing in Philadelphia and Milwaukee also ran much smoother—though not perfectly—than in 2020.

In 2020, the largest cities in Rust Belt swing states earned harsh criticism for stopping the vote count midway through election night and resuming the following morning, only to have Democrat Joe Biden take a commanding lead over President Trump once counting recommenced.

“The organization of the election integrity program made a tremendous difference this year both in helping Americans be more confident that election rules were being filed correctly and encouraging election officials to follow the law because there were eyes on the process,” Michael Thielen, executive director of the Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA), told Restoration News via email.

RNLA trained 2,700 lawyers from around the country on election law so they could be involved in ensuring the election was open, fair, and honest. Many of these were among the 500 lawyers recruited by the Trump campaign's election integrity program in each key state. The RNLA also deployed 196 of the best lawyers from non-target states to target states to assist with the effort. The RNC and Trump campaign actively monitored problems and quickly filed litigation to respond to issues that couldn't be solved outside court, working through a network of retained lawyers, many of whom are RNLA members and leaders.

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A Victory for Election Integrity Advocates

“Election officials generally do not want to be the news story,” Dixon said when asked what went differently this time. “In 2020, we saw that in Philly and Detroit, where they were the main story for weeks.”

She added election officials were better prepared for a high number of absentee ballots, and they conducted themselves more professionally toward Republican poll watchers than last time. “Even the room itself,” she added, “looked like a professional operation.”

Election integrity reform also played a role.

Dixon noted that Pennsylvania passed a new rule requiring continuous counting of absentee ballots, referring to Act 88 in 2021. Whereas in 2020, “they would take a break for a few hours and observers had to be out as well.” This prompted distrust among Republican voters in the counting process. This time, however, they were obligated by law to count ballots through the night if necessary.

In Detroit, counting ballots continuously also helped election workers in Michigan release the results much faster than in 2020.

Rasmussen Reports head pollster Mark Mitchell said in a recent interview he noticed this year that those cities did pause their vote count again—but only for around half an hour—as results from other states showed the country lurching to the right. He claimed this caused some nervousness at the Trump campaign headquarters in Mar-a-Lago.

“Then, I saw Milwaukee and Madison,” he remembered. “Milwaukee was only, I think, 30–40 percent [in]. Madison—somebody had dumped Madison results—it was like 90 percent in.” He added that the immediate resumption of counting likely owed to there not being enough Democratic votes in Wisconsin for Harris, and she needed to win all three Rust Belt swing states.

Observation rights played another key difference in this election’s counting process, according to Dixon, who noted the “adversarial relationship in 2020” did not exist. Election officials were prepared to have Republican observers present, and the observers had full observation rights during the entire process—a right many were denied on election night in 2020.

In Milwaukee, for instance, a Republican observer noticed the panels on the absentee vote tabulators were unlocked, which would have allowed someone to access the on/off buttons and USB slots. Although election officials claimed there was no evidence of tampering with the machines, they immediately locked them in front of observers and started the absentee count again, which briefly delayed the vote count release.

Milwaukee, Detroit, and Philadelphia’s conduct in the 2020 election gave Republicans just cause to question the results and lose confidence in some blue cities’ ability to process and count votes fairly. Republicans spent the past four years scrutinizing the mistakes that led to this loss of confidence and thanks to RNLA’s preparation, new voter integrity laws, and increased professionalism by those cities’ election officials, this year’s election went smoothly.

Mitchell remarked, however, that Republicans cannot sit back and hope to get lucky in future elections and suggested Trump go on an “election integrity jihad” to clean up the voting system once and for all.

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