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Emboldened Republican poll watchers, including many who embrace former President Donald Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election, are expected to flood election offices and polling places.
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. 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 claim spread by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the 2020 presidential election was riddled with fraud.
Local election officials across the United States are bracing for a wave of confrontations on Election Day in November. Emboldened Republican poll watchers, including many who embrace former President Donald Trump's falsehoods about the 2020 election, are expected to flood election offices and polling places.
“You need to back off!” an election director recalled hollering after a woman wedged herself between a voter and the machine where the voter was trying to cast his ballot.
GOLDSBORO, N.C. (AP) — 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. “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.