GOP recruits poll monitors from suburban areas to monitor the vote in Democratic cities
Republicans have made suburban areas a recruiting ground for their army of Election Day poll monitors, with plans to deploy some into urban, Democratic epicenters that have remained the focus of conservatives’ erroneous claims of voter fraud.
Republicans have made suburban areas a recruiting ground for their army of Election Day poll monitors, with plans to deploy some into urban, Democratic epicenters that have remained the focus of conservatives’ erroneous claims of voter fraud.
The strategy has the potential to be uniquely disruptive to voters and election staff this fall, nonpartisan elections experts say, given that the volunteers would be dispatched to monitor areas with different political and demographic makeups than their own — and potentially different protocols for casting and counting ballots.
“In addition to voter intimidation risks, I think that the strategy also poses the potential to be just disruptive to the election process in general,” said Jonathan Diaz, the director of voting advocacy at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.
“In the abstract, it’s a good thing to have representatives from every political party and from the campaigns observing election processes. That’s normal,” he said. “The problem comes when you have an effort like this that seems to be aiming to recruit people for the express purpose of uncovering the fraud that doesn’t exist.”
During the 2020 election, many of Republicans’ unfounded voter fraud claims were directed at big urban areas in battleground states — including Detroit, Philadelphia and Milwaukee — where large populations of Black and Latino voters cast their ballots. Despite no widespread fraud being unearthed, the claims have remained a prominent rallying cry from elements of the right who have spent the last four years pre-emptively building the idea that it could occur again in 2024.
Rating: 5