Republicans have made suburban areas a recruiting ground for their army of Election Day poll monitors, with plans to deploy some into urban, Democratic epicenters that have remained the focus of conservatives’ erroneous claims of voter fraud.
The strategy has the potential to be uniquely disruptive to voters and election staff this fall, nonpartisan elections experts say, given that the volunteers would be dispatched to monitor areas with different political and demographic makeups than their own — and potentially different protocols for casting and counting ballots.
“In addition to voter intimidation risks, I think that the strategy also poses the potential to be just disruptive to the election process in general,” said Jonathan Diaz, the director of voting advocacy at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.