Michael Whatley: The RNC’s Biggest Election Integrity Push Yet

Name: Michael Whatley: The RNC’s Biggest Election Integrity Push Yet
Uploaded: 2026-10-21T21:06:25.820Z
Duration: 1 min 56 s
Channel: CPAC

CPAC

Oct 21, 2026

Michael Whatley explains how the RNC plans to expand its election integrity operation nationwide ahead of future elections.

Speaking at CPAC, Whatley says the RNC focused heavily on battleground states in 2024 but now has more time to build programs across all 50 states. He discusses election-related lawsuits, voter rolls, voter ID requirements, and working with Congress, governors, and state officials on election laws and procedures.

CPAC hosts incredible guests and speakers including Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles of the Daily Wire, the late Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, Steve Bannon of War Room, Donald Trump Jr., Vivek Ramaswamy, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Dan Bongino, and many more leading voices in conservative media and politics.

Again, great work over there. Chairman, with the Democrat Party, we are very aware of the fact that to them, their God is government. They do this nonstop from sunup to sundown, Monday through Sunday. It's not just in election years like Republicans used to do. It's all the time. So they are preparing, scheming, plotting for this midterm as well. As Frank said, we don't want to rest on our laurels. We want to be prepared for the new wave of problems we could face at the ballot box. So what is the RNC doing to kind of get out ahead of the next little, the next big election, rather, but all the other little things that could come up? Look, I think the first thing is that when Laura and I came in in March, we had eight months till Election Day to build a national program for the first time ever. And we really focused on the seven battleground states. We played a lot in New York and California because of the congressional seats. And then we were working, you know, in Virginia and Minnesota and New Hampshire in case they got traction. Right. But now we have two years. Now we have time to build this out in truly into a national fashion. We filed 175 lawsuits last year across the country to get those laws in place up front. Now we have the opportunity to go into every state and make sure that every single state is going to have the right rules of the road. We also have a chance to work with Congress. Brian Stile, who's the chair of the House committee that takes care of election integrity, Ron Johnson is the Senate committee chair, are doing great work. We're going to work with them to make sure that we have national laws that are going to be implemented, right? Right now, it's illegal in every state. It's a federal law that only American citizens can vote. And every single state has got to clean up their voter rolls every day, right? Why do we not have a federal law that says you have to have voter ID? I think we should, right? There are other things that we need to put in place right now through Congress, and we're going to take this time to work with Congress, the governors, and the states to make it even stronger.