Several hundred volunteer lawyers plan to be in swing states on Election Day, ready to watch for irregularities or errors that could be addressed by the courts.

Both parties have regularly deployed legal teams and poll monitors in key states before presidential elections since 2000, when the Supreme Court ended a ballot recount in Florida that secured George W. Bush’s victory over Al Gore.

The Republican Party — both nationally and state-led — is training poll observers and lawyers to flag concerns about ballots and Election Day procedures to avoid any paranoia among voters and to be ready in the event of a Bush v. Gore scenario.

Claire Zunk, communications director for election integrity at the Republican National Committee, said former President Donald Trump’s election integrity efforts aim to make sure every legal vote is protected and minimize threats to the voting process.

“While Democrats continue their election interference against President Trump and the American people, our operation is confronting their schemes and preparing for November. Should the Democrats choose to continue their attacks on election safeguards through Election Day, we will be prepared to litigate and ensure the election is fair, transparent, legal, and accurate,” Ms. Zunk said in an email.

The former president has claimed that Democratic prosecutors have used criminal charges against him along the East Coast as a form of election interference, including his upcoming sentencing in New York for a conviction stemming from his hush money trial in Manhattan.

Mr. Trump and his allies also have raised concerns over noncitizens potentially casting ballots and fraud related to the use of mail-in ballots.

What’s more, American First Legal sued all of Arizona’s 15 counties in an attempt to remove noncitizens from its voter rolls. The organization announced this week it filed an amended complaint in that litigation, which is pending roughly two months ahead of November’s elections.

And the Public Interest Legal Foundation has filed lawsuits in Nevada over cleaning up that state’s voter rolls, so that absentee ballots don’t go out to noncitizens or incorrect commercial addresses.

In 2020, Mr. Trump and allied lawyers filed more than 60 lawsuits in an attempt to get courts to review what they claimed were election-related irregularities.

Some of that litigation focused on Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The claims centered on alleged fraud related to voting machines and mail-in ballots.

Those lawsuits were all shut down.

Swing states likely to see GOP legal teams and poll observers on Election Day include North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia.

Jason Simmons, chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, said they’ll recruit and train more than 500 volunteer lawyers to assist in the November election cycle.

In 2020, North Carolina had roughly 500 volunteer lawyers and during the 2022 cycle, the state had more than 600.

“These attorneys are scattered across the state and in many instances are there on a moment’s notice where if we have an issue during early vote — and especially then on Election Day — can assist in reviewing what the issue may be, collecting affidavits and filing something locally if it needs to be filed,” Mr. Simmons explained.

There’s also a core group of lawyers — both paid and unpaid — that work in Raleigh to assist in “legal war room activities to review escalated items that come in from across the state if it can’t be handled at the local level,” Mr. Simmons added.

Mr. Trump won North Carolina’s 15 electoral votes by roughly 1% of the vote in 2020.

The swing state historically has swayed both to Republicans and Democrats depending on the cycle. Although it favored Mr. Trump in both 2020 and 2016, it favored former President Barack Obama in 2008.

Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes are also part of the coveted Rust Belt state coalition that candidates eye, which tends to swing back and forth between the parties.

President Biden won the state by roughly 0.6% in 2020, whereas Mr. Trump won the state by 0.77% in 2016.

Several hundred lawyers will be on the ground in Wisconsin flagging any irregularities this election cycle.

GOP officials from state parties in other key swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia did not immediately respond to a request for comment about their litigation efforts and planning ahead of Election Day.

Poll observers are trained to watch for abnormalities at polling centers and how to properly inspect absentee ballots.

But there’s generally more focus on mundane issues for lawyers, who are deployed throughout swing states. They focus on what happens in the event of a polling location opening late, if a voting machine goes down or if a voting site loses electricity or runs out of ballots.

David Becker, an election law expert who worked in the Clinton and Bush administrations, said there is no such thing as a perfect election and things do go wrong.

“That happens, considering we have hundreds of thousands of polling sites on Election Day,” said Mr. Becker, who is the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research. “This is why transparency is so important.”

“Good faith actors serving as observers for either party of either candidate play an essential role,” he added.

Officials from the Democratic National Committee and Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about their legal teams’ efforts.

State Democratic Party officials in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia also did not respond to requests for comment.

The Associated Press reported in June that Mr. Biden’s campaign and his allies on the Democratic National Committee have opened hundreds of campaign offices nationwide. Mr. Biden dropped out of the presidential contest in July, and Ms. Harris took up the mantle of the Democratic nominee.

DNC spokesperson Alex Floyd said the DNC, “alongside our partners at the state and local level, won’t let MAGA Republicans get away with these baseless attacks on our democracy, and we will continue to use every tool at our disposal to ensure that all Americans can make their voice heard at the ballot box,” the AP reported.

• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.