“Trump ‘army’ of poll watchers led by veteran of fraud claims”

AP:

A veteran Republican operative who got his start in politics by helping to persuade a judge to throw out hundreds of mail-in ballots is organizing an “army” of volunteers for President Donald Trump’s campaign to monitor voting in Democratic-leaning areas on Tuesday.

Mike Roman, Trump’s director of Election Day Operations, is a former White House aide from Pennsylvania who gathered claims in 1993 of voter fraud, resulting in a court ruling overturning election results and getting his candidate seated in the Pennsylvania State Senate.

It’s a strategy that Trump has been advocating on Twitter and on the stump.

For months the president has been trying to undercut the validity of mail-in ballots, a long-used method of voting that was up this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the last week, Trump has also suggested that any votes tabulated after Election Day are suspect, even as his campaign has opposed plans by elections officials to start counting mail-in ballots early.

Roman, who previously ran the secretive in-house intelligence unit for the political network led by GOP mega-donors Charles and David Koch, has organized a purported 50,000 poll watchers, many of them through an “Army For Trump” website that asks his supporters to “enlist” in his reelection fight. The campaign also has hired full-time staff in at least 11 battleground states to organize the effort, several of them young lawyers.

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