Just wow from The Intercept:
ON ELECTION DAY in November, some polling places could be patrolled by off-duty police officers and veterans, according to a plan hatched by Republican operatives.The idea is a reprisal of once-illegal Election Day “ballot security” intimidation tactics, intended to challenge voter registration and remove voters from the rolls. At a strategy session in February attended by conservative donors and activists, several people expressed a specific need for Republican poll watchers in “inner city” and predominantly Native American precincts, according to audio recordings of the event obtained by The Intercept and Documented.
“You get some [Navy] Seals in those polls and they’re going to say, ‘No, no, this is what it says. This is how we’re going to play this show,’” said Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, a group that lobbies for voting restrictions and organizes volunteers to go into precincts and aggressively challenge voters who they believe are improperly registered. “That’s what we need. We need people who are unafraid to call it like they see it.”
The election strategy discussions occurred during a three-day conference at the Ritz-Carlton in Orange County, California, and was sponsored by the Council for National Policy, a secretive foundation on the religious right. The Intercept has previously reported from CNP gatherings….
“This is an absolute front-line fight. Around every corner, you find a new way to cheat this process,” said Engelbrecht. Democrats, she warned, would use “mob rule” to siege elections with fraudulent votes. “The swarming tactics of a radicalized socialist mindset is a dangerous thing to behold.”
“Of interest here, we have a new initiative called ‘Continue to Serve,’ which is about recruiting veterans and first responders to work inside the polls,” she said, before suggesting that former Navy Seals should be tapped to watch the polls. “You want to talk about people who understand and respect law and order and chain of command.”“Do you want to go into an inner city precinct or a tribal precinct and be the Republican there to oversee things? I mean, that is not a comfortable place to be and that is where the fraud happens.”
The idea to bring veterans and police into the fold as poll watchers piqued the interest of a number of attendees at the event. One unidentified participant during the meeting claimed that Democrats had long relied on voter fraud among Native American communities to win elections.
Trent England, executive director of the Oklahoma Council for Public Affairs, a local conservative think tank, agreed, recalling his own experience as a Republican volunteer and noting that Engelbrecht’s solution for “first responder” poll watchers could correct the problem among “inner city” and Native communities.
“Do you want to go into an inner city precinct or a tribal precinct and be the Republican there to oversee things? I mean, that is not a comfortable place to be and that is where the fraud happens,” said England. “We have to find people.”
Brad Smith, a former Federal Election Commission member under President George Bush, echoed Engelbrecht’s warnings and called for participants to seek training from the Republican National Lawyers Association. “We need poll workers and we need good ones,” Smith added.
Later during the discussion, Morton Blackwell, a member of the RNC, praised Engelbrecht’s proposal and said he would push for the RNC to “devote significant resources” into “ballot integrity.” Blackwell observed that since the court-ordered ban had long prevented the party from aggressive poll watching had recently been lifted, the RNC now has “unrestricted authority to weigh in on ballot security operations.”