“Unless you think elections that are conducted according to the rule of law are a threat. “We are not a threat,” she told The Associated Press during a text message exchange. Mitchell said her organization, the Election Integrity Network, is just trying to ensure that everyone follows the law. It had recently been freed from a consent decree that limited its poll watching operation after it previously was found to have targeted Black and Latino voters. The worries this year are similar to those during the 2020 election, when Trump began railing against mail voting and the Republican National Committee launched its first national operation in decades. Their role is generally to observe, question any deviations from required procedure and, in some states, lodge formal complaints or provide testimony for objections filed in court. The laws governing poll watchers vary from state to state. “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.
#Watcher knight manual#
Mitchell was on the phone with Trump when the then-president called Georgia’s secretary of state in January 2021 and asked that official to “find” enough votes for Trump to be declared the state’s winner.Ĭhris Harvey, who was Georgia’s election director in 2020 when Trump claimed the election was being stolen from him, 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. In Nevada, the Republican Party’s nominee for secretary of state, Jim Marchant, denies President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory and was a featured speaker at a party poll watcher training.Ĭleta Mitchell, a prominent conservative lawyer and North Carolina resident, is running a group recruiting poll watchers and workers in eight swing states.
In Michigan, groups that have spread falsehoods about that race are recruiting poll watchers. But election officials fear that a surge of conspiracy believers are signing up for those positions this year and are being 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. Poll watchers have traditionally been an essential element of electoral transparency, the eyes and ears for the two major political parties who help ensure that the actual mechanics of voting are administered fairly and accurately.
“The back and forth for the precinct officials, having somebody constantly on you for every little thing that you do - not because you’re doing it wrong, but because they don’t agree with what you’re doing.” “It becomes complete babysitting,” Risku said in an interview. But the state’s rules review board, appointed by the Republican-controlled Legislature, blocked the new poll watcher regulations in late September, leaving election officials such as Risku without additional tools to control behavior on Election Day, Nov. Those fears led the North Carolina State Board of Elections in August to tighten rules governing poll watchers. Many have spent the past two years steeped in lies about the accuracy of the 2020 election. The man eventually was able to vote, but the incident was one of several Risku cited from the May primary that made her worry about a wave of newly aggressive poll watchers. “You need to back off!” Risku recalled hollering after the woman wedged herself between a voter and the machine where the voter was trying to cast his ballot at a precinct about 60 miles southeast of Raleigh.
The situation with the poll watcher had gotten so bad that Anne Risku, the election director in North Carolina’s Wayne County, had to intervene via speakerphone.
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