'Watch each other' Republicans want to recruit poll observers, workers and lawyers in Ohio

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost joined other Republican officials to recruit poll observers and workers at a Republican National Committee event on Friday.

The Protect the Vote tour is a nationwide project by the Republican National Committee to recruit poll workers, lawyers and observers in an effort to secure elections.

Numerous reports have found that voter fraud is rare in the U.S and many instances of alleged fraud turn out to be the mistakes of voters or administrators, according to New York University's Brennan Center for Justice .

The RNC project focuses on 18 states, including Ohio, where Gov. Mike DeWine signed one of the strictest voter ID laws in the country.

RNC Chair Michael Whatley said the committee would like to have a minimum of 5,000 voting observers in every battleground state. He said county parties would put observers on a list and turn it in to the county board of elections.

Whatley said he is not concerned about voter intimidation as the observers will be trained and work within state law.

"One of the things that we focus on in the training sessions is making sure that we respect the process, we respect the poll workers, and we respect, most importantly, the voters," he said.

Whatley said that "99.5% of the time" there are no voting issues but observers would be on the lookout for people getting too close to voting machines and people who are not registered coming in to vote.

“We've seen a number of different instances across the country where there are honest mistakes, but you want to catch them, and you want to make sure that the process is being followed correctly across the state," he said.

Yost said Ohio is the "gold standard."

"We have bipartisan observation in all of the actual doing of the elections, the counting, the casting and as well as the opportunity for observers. Here, the best solution to making sure that everybody plays by the rules is to watch each other," he said.

Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who serves in the Army Reserve, was unable to attend because he was in active duty in North Carolina.

Erin Glynn is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: 'Watch each other' Republicans want to recruit poll observers, workers and lawyers in Ohio