Far-right activists boast on Truth Social they'll work the polls — and tamper with election equipment
On Monday, POLITICO reported that a new investigation reveals people on far-right social networks, including Gab, Gettr and Donald Trump's own platform Truth Social, are boasting that they plan to work as official poll workers in their precincts tomorrow.
"The report from Advance Democracy Inc. found examples of users on sites Truth Social — the social media site owned by former President Donald Trump — and pro-Trump online forums who follow QAnon conspiracy theories," reported Heidi Przybyla and Zach Montellaro. "In posts compiled between March and late October of this year, several discuss their intent to identify voter fraud, including by installing their own software into elections computers. They also discussed bringing cameras to polling places and falsely claiming to be Democrats on their election worker applications."
"Many of the posters in the ADI report publicly detailed plans to disregard election rules, including bringing hidden cameras into polling sites," said the report. One user on Gettr claiming to be a poll worker said, “I’m going to try to get a hidden camera with a large memory card to record all day in the Las Vegas area. Really looking forward to seeing what happens.” Another said they worked polls in August in Palm Beach, Florida, and said the “process is relatively smooth,” but also alleged there were ways to cheat.
This comes after Michigan Republicans were caught on camera telling election observer recruits to bring cell phones and pens to polling places, even though it is against the law. It also comes after multiple elections clerks have been accused of breaching voting equipment to try to prove baseless conspiracy theories that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, with Mesa County, Colorado clerk Tina Peters facing charges for election tampering and misconduct.
"POLITICO previously reported the drive by key conservative groups to find poll workers and watchers was partly about creating a record to challenge results after the fact," noted the report. "John Eastman, the attorney who led Trump’s unsuccessful attempt to throw out legitimate election results, told activists in New Mexico to file complaints to form the basis for court challenges." Eastman is currently under federal investigations and an ethics probe into his law license in California.
"Election officials have publicly stressed that insider threats arising from poll workers, at least thus far, have been relatively isolated incidents and that there did not appear to be a widespread epidemic of bad faith workers in the run-up to the election," noted the report. "They add that there are safeguards in place to prevent any individual worker — or even a small group — from altering the outcome of an election, though they could interfere with the process for individual voters or in a single precinct."
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