What Next - The Right’s Poll-Watcher Army
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 7 June 2022
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Republicans who still haven’t accepted that Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in 2020 are recruiting “a volunteer army” of poll watchers and poll workers for upcoming elections. For those who want transparent and fair elections, an influx of enthusiasm is theoretically a good thing. But if new poll workers and poll watchers have an agenda— chasing after fraud that didn’t happen—can they hurt more than they help?
Guest: Alexandra Berzon, investigative reporter for the New York Times.
Guest hosted by Mary C. Curtis, columnist at Roll Call and host of its Equal Time podcast.
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Transcript
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| 0:36.8 | Sometimes I think back to November 2020 and that limbo we were all in as we waited for the |
| 0:42.5 | presidential election to be called. A day or two after voting closed, Trump supporters started |
| 0:48.2 | massing at a ballot processing center in Maricopa County, Arizona. They were agitated and suspicious |
| 0:55.2 | about what poll workers and poll watches were doing inside. I wondered where all that energy would go |
| 1:06.4 | after the election was concluded and in recent months I may have gotten an answer. |
| 1:15.2 | Some of that energy may be not as loud but just as intense is going toward election administration. |
| 1:21.7 | We need to be present. We need to have you as election officials as poll watchers researching |
| 1:28.0 | what's going on in the election offices. Cleda Mitchell, a Republican lawyer, has made |
| 1:33.4 | it her mission to tell stop the steel supporters to lay down their signs and apply to be poll workers |
| 1:39.2 | and poll watchers. You know the people who hand out aye voted stickers and watch the ballots get |
| 1:44.9 | counted at the end of the day. We're going to try to help you as citizens get organized to be |
| 1:50.0 | involved in and a presence at election boards just like parents all over the country are doing |
| 1:54.9 | with school boards. But Cleda Mitchell and her colleagues are not disinterested parties. |
| 2:00.4 | She wants to see conservatives winning elections. She believes Trump won the last election |
| 2:06.4 | and that casts a shadow over her efforts. The system that we witnessed in 2020 was not right. |
| 2:14.4 | There's been a lot of scrutiny around what happened following the election in 2020 and there were |
... |
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