ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo–With less than a month to go before voters go to the polls, election officials in Missouri say they have a simple answer for skeptics who continue to give voice to concerns about election fraud: come see how it works on the inside.

Around the country, there are concerns that the jobs of poll watchers, the eyes and ears for the two major political parties who help ensure that the mechanics of voting are administered fairly and accurately, will in 2022 be held by conspiracy believers trained by others who have propagated the lie spread by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the 2020 presidential election was riddled with fraud.

To date, despite multiple recounts and investigations, no claim of fraud that would have materially changed the outcome of the 2020 election has been substantiated.

In Missouri, a group affiliated with Mike Lindell, who has embraced and amplified Trump’s election claims, seized on an incident discovered in April’s municipal election in St. Charles County where an election official was able to vote twice thanks to a glitch that could have affected 300 voters. 

The "Missouri Canvassers" have pledged to “go on offense” in future elections, offering up checklists for poll watchers and poll workers so that they will have what a representative described in a seminar video over the summer as “incident reports” moving forward. 

Chris Harvey, who was Georgia's election director in 2020, recalled how swarms of Trump backers came as self-appointed poll watchers to observe the state's manual recounts, harassing election workers and disrupting the process. Harvey fears a repeat this year.

“The whole tension that we're expecting to see at polling places is something we're talking to election officials about, something we're talking to law enforcement about,” said Harvey, who is advising a group of election officials and law enforcement before November.

Missouri election officials are downplaying those concerns, at least here.

“You hear about problems around the rest of the country. Missouri's a different state, the people of Missouri frankly are better than people you hear about in a lot of other areas. If the people of Missouri have questions about elections then I welcome those,” said Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft told Spectrum News on Sunday.“ I serve the people of the state, our poll workers, our election authorities, they serve the people of the state, we want to answer their questions, we want to invite them to be part of the process, so they can see how it actually happens and occurs and if they have ideas, we'll take them under advisement.”

“If you think there's a problem, come work at the polls and you'll see there isn't a problem but it'll give them the peace of mind that they check people in, they saw that those people were who they said they were, they were in the system,” said St. Louis County Republican Election Director Rick Stream. “A lot of the people, the skeptics don't have a problem with who's actually voting, the problem is how we've counted the votes, how the votes are tabulated and things like that and in St. Louis County it's about as plain Jane as it could get and simple so you can't do anything.”

Linda Rantz, a co-organizer for the Missouri Canvassers, said the organization's volunteers will be serving as poll workers, election judges and election challengers. They'll be looking for issues ranging from problems with voting machines all the way down to making sure election judges take the proper oath and sign documents.

Missouri lawmakers passed legislation in the final days of the 2022 legislative session that accomplishes some of what the Missouri Canvassers wanted, including bans on drop boxes and starting in 2023, requiring paper ballots. Most notably, voters in November will also need a valid government photo ID to avoid voting with a provisional ballot which will then have its signature matched to one already on file. Democrats went along with the bill after inserting a provision into the bill allowing for two weeks of no-excuse absentee voting. 

The ID requirement is being challenged in court, but Ashcroft has said he doesn’t expect a decision prior to the November election.

Rantz said her organization still has concerns over what they say is a lack of transparency on voter rolls.

"I don't think of it as wow, they just fixed elections in Missouri," she said.