The R.N.C. Asked a Conspiracy Theorist to Train Poll Watchers. Here’s What He Told Them.

A few years ago, Jack Posobiec was a fringe figure and a right-wing agitator best known for helping spread “Pizzagate,” a conspiracy theory about Democrats running a satanic child abuse ring underneath a Washington pizza parlor.

This month, he was invited by the Republican National Committee to speak to a group of volunteers about how to monitor elections in Michigan.

The invitation was one sign of how the party uses figures and fictions that were once considered out of bounds to energize its activists. The counsel that Mr. Posobiec delivered was another.

He blasted elections in the Democratic stronghold of Philadelphia, for example, joking that officials in Venezuela learned how to conduct their elections, widely seen as corrupt, by visiting the city and studying how it is done, according to a recording of the Sept. 4 meeting obtained by The New York Times.

The key to elections, he said, is that “it doesn’t matter who votes. It matters who counts the votes.”

Both Republican and Democratic groups have long dispatched such monitors to polling places, typically with instructions to report problems with equipment, long lines or any other issues. Democrats generally emphasize issues related to restrictions on voting and Republicans look out for voter fraud.