The number of poll watchers nearly quadrupled in Ada County. Here’s how many, and why
Tuesday’s elections saw significantly more poll watchers in Ada County than just two years ago.
Political parties and candidates in Idaho may request one poll watcher per precinct to observe voting. If the monitors see anything they deem to be concerning, they can alert their party or candidate. Poll watchers must be registered with the county at least 12 days before Election Day.
In the past, the number of poll watchers was relatively small in Idaho’s most populous county. In 2020, just 26 were requested: 14 by the Republican Party, 11 by Democrats and one by District 14 state Sen. Scott Grow.
On Tuesday, 94 poll watchers were registered to participate in the election in Ada, including 50 requested by far-right gubernatorial candidate Ammon Bundy.
The Ada County Republican Party requested 41 poll watchers, while District 16B Republican candidate Jackie Davidson had two and District 19A Republican candidate Melissa Christian one. Davidson lost to Democratic Rep. Colin Nash by about 3,600 votes, and Christian lost to Democratic Rep. Lauren Necochea by over 9,000 votes.
“Citizens independently watching the process of voting is a statutory right,” Ada County Republican Party Chairman Victor Miller told the Idaho Statesman. “Watching and knowing how the process works is a good thing.”
The shift in poll watcher numbers marked a 261% increase from the 2020 election, but Ada County wasn’t an anomaly.
After Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, former President Donald Trump made unsubstantiated claims of large-scale voter fraud. Following his lead, there has been a nationwide push by prominent Republicans to recruit more poll watchers to monitor elections. On Sunday, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel confirmed on CNN’s “State of the Union” that her group worked to increase the numbers vastly ahead of the midterms.
Reuters reported that Trump supporters have organized the training of thousands of poll watchers. In Pennsylvania, Republican officials boosted their poll numbers to six times the 2020 total, according to The Washington Post.
Locally, Ada County Republicans posted on Facebook on Oct. 5 asking for poll workers and poll watchers. Even last year, Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson posted a link to the Ada County poll watcher sign-up website for the Nov. 2, 2021, election.
The drive from Republicans has caused some to worry that large numbers of poll watchers will wind up intimidating voters or poll workers. But in Ada County, there were no significant issues, according to officials.
“There were no disruptions,” Chelsea Carattini, communications specialist with the Ada County Clerk’s Office, told the Statesman in a phone interview. “Everything went smoothly. We know that there were definitely poll watchers at many of our precincts, but we had no issues throughout Election Day.”
Miller said watchers observed no problems at the polls and he called the Ada County Clerk’s Office “fantastic to deal with.” The only report he received was of a poll worker who was not calling out the full names of voters after they turned in ballots. That minor issue was corrected, he said.
“Otherwise, we are super blessed to live in Ada County, which has very secure, very well-organized, very well-run elections,” Miller said.
The Ada County Democratic Party dropped its poll watcher count from 11 in 2020 to zero on Tuesday. Chairman Eric Berg attributed this to the party’s “faith in the election process.”
“We talked with the clerk about the procedures, about challenging things, and we were really comfortable with how they wanted to handle things and had complete faith that the poll workers could really handle just about anything thrown at them,” Berg said.
Bundy did not respond to the Idaho Statesman’s request for comment about his poll watchers.
This story was originally published November 9, 2022 at 6:27 PM.
