“GOP to massively step up 2022 poll watching efforts in Michigan and across U.S.”

Detroit Free Press:

The GOP will massively increase its poll watching and election litigation efforts in 2022 and beyond after so far failing to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election through a series of lawsuits and audits, a top Republican National Committee official said Friday.

Josh Findlay, election integrity director for the RNC, said one problem with GOP operations in 2020 was that attorneys for former President Donald Trump and other conservative groups went to court too late.

Going to court on Election Day is “not going to be effective,” Findlay told attendees at the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference, held every other year on the northern Michigan island that can only be reached by ferry or private plane, and where motorized vehicles are generally banned.

Findlay acknowledged another problem — one that both nonpartisan judges and Democrats said in response to allegations of voter fraud and irregularities put forward by Republican poll watchers in Detroit. There, large numbers of volunteers were recruited by the GOP, in many cases at the last minute, to go to the TCF Center in Detroit while absentee ballots were being counted after the Nov. 3 vote.

Many were barred from entering or required to leave, in some cases because of  social distancing rules, resulting in a chaotic scene in which crowds of people were banging on the windows of the counting room and shouting as election workers tried to complete the count. More significantly, many scenes the poll watchers witnessed and described as evidence of possible fraud were discounted by judges after election experts testified that the witnesses lacked knowledge and training and simply did not understand what they were seeing, interpreting normal election processes, such as the presence of blank ballots needed to duplicate military ballots and damaged absentee ballots, as signs of malfeasance.

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