GOP Ramps Up Effort to Monitor Voting  08/11 06:14

   

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- Since 1937, the state of Pennsylvania has had strict 
rules about who can stand in polling stations and challenge the eligibility of 
voters. The restrictions are meant to curb the use of "poll monitors" long sent 
by both parties to look out for voting mishaps but at times used to intimidate 
voters.

   In June, the Republican National Committee sued to ease those rules, saying 
they imposed arbitrary limits on the party's ability to keep tabs on the voting 
process no matter where it occurs.

   The Pennsylvania lawsuit over an obscure slice of election law is just one 
piece of the party's sweeping plan to expand poll monitoring this election 
year. Thanks to a federal court ruling that freed the party from restrictions 
--- a result of tactics found to be aimed at minority voters --- the GOP is 
mounting a broad effort to keep a close watch on who casts ballots.

   The GOP is recruiting 50,000 monitors, typically party activists and 
specially appointed volunteers, across 15 battleground states. Meanwhile, the 
party has filed, or intervened in, lawsuits challenging election rules across 
the country, including cases in battleground states like Nevada, Wisconsin and 
Florida that challenge laws meant to ease access to absentee ballots and voting 
by mail.

   Republicans say they are focused on preventing the fraud they have long 
maintained, without evidence, is rampant in U.S. elections. Democrats and 
voting rights groups fear the planned influx of poll watchers under the 
imprimatur of the RNC is a veiled effort to suppress Democratic turnout, 
particularly in minority communities.

   The issue is especially contentious for two parties already clashing over 
how to protect the right to vote during a pandemic. As election officials 
prepare for an unprecedented surge of mailed ballots, both parties are gearing 
up for the possibility of protracted legal battles over how those votes are 
tallied, giving new weight to the question of who can monitor the count.

   "By and large, these kinds of ballot security operations, especially in a 
heated partisan and polarizing environment and with the emotions surrounding 
elections --- they risk crossing lines, causing disruptions," said Wendy 
Weiser, who directs the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

   Republicans say the monitors they're recruiting will receive training to 
ensure they follow state laws. The real reason Democrats are objecting is 
because Republicans know that "the playing field has been leveled," said RNC 
spokesperson Mandi Merritt.

   "We can do what Democrats and other Republican groups have been able to do 
for decades," Merritt said in a statement. "This is about getting more people 
to vote, certainly not less."

   Democrats say they, too, have spent millions of dollars building up staff. 
They say their goal is to support voters who need questions answered and to 
combat what they say is a misinformation campaign aimed at suppressing turnout.

   Former Vice President Joe Biden told those attending a July fundraiser that 
his campaign has 600 attorneys and 10,000 volunteers ready to ensure voters can 
cast ballots.

   Traditionally, poll watchers monitor polling locations and can alert 
campaigns and party lawyers about perceived irregularities, including people 
being unfairly blocked from voting, identification laws not being followed or 
poor signage. In some states, citizen observers can lodge challenges against 
individual voters, kicking ballots to a review board or forcing them to be 
counted provisionally until the complaint is settled.

   In 2020, when as many as half of ballots may be cast by mail, poll watching 
may extend to mail balloting, where boards that include observers from both 
parties often review individual ballots to determine whether they should be 
counted.

   The Pennsylvania lawsuit seeks to overturn state law that says poll watchers 
may serve only in the counties where they live. Republicans are asking a judge 
to allow monitors to be present any place votes are cast, including any 
locations where absentee or mail ballots are returned.

   Even before the coronavirus reconfigured the election, both parties were 
bracing for a titanic battle over voting in courts and at the polls.

   Intensifying the conflict was a judge's 2018 decision to lift a consent 
decree, in place for nearly 40 years, that required the RNC to have court 
approval for organized poll monitoring activities, such as interrogating 
prospective voters about their qualifications before they cast ballots or 
deputizing civilians as law enforcement officials.

   "There is no modern precedent for what to expect," said Marc Elias, who 
represents Democrats in voting rights lawsuits across the country.

   The 1982 agreement resolved a lawsuit that accused the RNC and the New 
Jersey Republican State Committee of voter intimidation tactics in that state's 
gubernatorial election one year earlier. Those included the hiring of off-duty 
law enforcement officers to patrol polling places in minority communities.

   Newly freed from the decree, the RNC can now centralize what individual 
parties and campaigns and the states had to perform.

   "For 40 years, the Republican Party has been fighting this battle with one 
hand tied behind its back," Justin Clark, now a senior counsel to Trump's 
campaign, told a conservative conference in March.

   Democrats are concerned an organized poll-watching force could engage in the 
type of activity that produced the consent decree in the first place. The 
agreement was modified several times after Democrats raised new allegations 
that it had been violated, including in 1990 after the North Carolina State 
Republican Party sent postcards to Black voters warning them that submitting 
false information to a federal election official was a crime.

   Republicans have given some clues as to how their poll watchers might be 
deployed.

   The monitors will ideally both watch the setup of election systems, where 
Clark said the bulk of errors occur, and eyeball Election Day activity for 
possible fraud. Rather than solely focusing in Democratic bastions, they'll 
also spread out to smaller cities, such as Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where Trump 
will try to run up robust margins.

   "What we're going to be able to do if we can recruit the bodies is focus on 
these places because that's where our voters are," Clark told a Republican 
lawyers group in Wisconsin in November, according to a recording posted online 
by the Democratic group American Bridge. "Traditionally it's always been 
Republicans suppressing votes in places, but let's start protecting our voters. 
We know where they are now."

   Another Republican operative, Josh Helton, speaking at the March 
conservative conference, recalled organizing 2,000 volunteers to watch polling 
places in Philadelphia in 2016.

   "Just having a presence of some sort is a deterrent for probably 80% of the 
bad behavior that is going to happen," Helton said. "If people are left 
unattended and unchaperoned in some of these areas where there is no Republican 
presence whatsoever, then they're going to cheat."

   Democrats, for their part, have hired voter protection staffers in 19 
states, created an online tool to warn voters they may be purged from 
registration systems, and launched toll-free numbers where voters could report 
problems.

   "We have a really robust operation," said Rachana Desai Martin, Biden's 
voter protection director. "We have a ton of interest. My inbox is filled with 
people who want to help us protect the right to vote."