How Republicans have mobilised an army of poll watchers to ‘stop the steal’    We haven't been able to take paymentYou must update your payment details via My Account or by clicking update payment details to keep your subscription.Update payment detailsAct now to keep your subscriptionWe've tried to contact you several times as we haven't been able to take payment. You must update your payment details via My Account or by clicking update payment details to keep your subscription.Update payment detailsYour subscription is due to terminateWe've tried to contact you several times as we haven't been able to take payment. You must update your payment details via My Account, otherwise your subscription will terminate. Update payment detailsMore from The Times and The Sunday TimesTap 'Menu' and then 'Explore'Tap 'Menu' and then 'Explore'DismissAccessibility LinksSkip to contentSearchHomeUKWorldCommentBusiness & MoneySportLife & StyleCulturePuzzlesMagazinesLoginSubscribeLog inSubscribeHomeUKWorldCommentBusiness & MoneySportLife & StyleCulturePuzzlesMagazines IN DEPTHHow Republicans have mobilised an army of poll watchers to ‘stop the steal’Despite scant evidence of electoral fraud some 175,000 Trump supporters have volunteered to scrutinise suspicious voters. Make no mistake, one official says — this could sow chaosElection night in 2016 with Republicans in Pima County, Arizona. Trump supporters in the county have been told to monitor polling stations for ballot stuffing this NovemberTIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILLSamuel Lovett, New YorkThursday October 03 2024, 8.10pm, The TimesAs a retired high school maths teacher who once pioneered a national algebra test, Deanne De’Liberto knows a thing or two about cheating.Today the New Yorker can be found in Greensboro, North Carolina, where she is teaching once again. This time her students are learning to spot individuals who might defraud a presidential election.What she needs, she says, is a list of names to help her team of Republican volunteers identify suspicious characters in the four weeks before polling day.With polls showing the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on a knife edge, and the result potentially hanging on a few thousand voters in a handful of swing states, operatives of both parties are readying a ground operation and gathering intelligence that could be deployed to challenge the results. De’Liberto is part of an army of at least 175,000 volunteer poll workers and observers mobilised by Republicans to police the polls. Trump himself has told supporters to “stop the steal”, linking alleged voter fraud to illegal immigration. AdvertisementOn Thursday, for example, it emerged that eight states, including North Carolina, had sought to ban non-citizens from voting, despite this already being illegal. Critics have described this as part of Republican efforts to challenge the results and taint a Democratic victory.At her courses in North Carolina, a key swing state, De’Liberto, 55, is training “poll watchers” to identify unsound ballots being cast. Her register of suspicious voters would include illegal migrants, criminals, dead residents and people who are only pretending to live in Greensboro.Her classes promise to arm poll watchers with the “tools and knowledge to effectively perform your services at voting sites”. She plans to train 300 observers who will be deployed throughout Guilford County for the November poll.She encourages them to look out for vote-buying, election officials “providing non-neutral voting instructions”, voters trying to cast two ballots and collusive voter behaviour. She wants to challenge any early ballots cast by individuals who, according to her “suspicious persons list”, should not be registered to vote. “Those [early or absentee] ballots are retrievable,” she says. “So we have time to submit our challenge.”Refusal to accept 2020 defeatThe notion that Trump will not accept defeat in November is being reinforced by Harris on the campaign trail, where she is joined this week in Wisconsin by Liz Cheney, a longtime Republican who became one of Trump’s fiercest antagonists over the January 6 insurrection.AdvertisementLiz Cheney, a lifelong Republican, has endorsed Kamala HarrisALAMYOn Wednesday a 165-page legal brief was unsealed that illustrated the extent to which Trump attempted to overturn the result four years ago. Jack Smith, the special counsel investigating his efforts to subvert the 2020 vote, suggested that he had sought to spread a narrative of widespread voter fraud he knew was false. In one conversation, a White House official told Trump that his claims would not stand up in court. “The details don’t matter,” Trump allegedly replied.Democrats are running their own volunteer recruitment effort. By mid-August some 330,000 volunteers had joined the Harris campaign, though it is not clear what proportion of these had been recruited as poll watchers. “Make no mistake, there are those who intend to sow chaos,” says Tammy Patrick, chief programme officer at the National Association of Election Officials. “Election observation is the bedrock of transparency. Where this issue can become problematic is if the perimeters around what can be observed, when and by whom, is not well-defined well in advance of the election.”The Capitol riot on January 6, 2021 came after Trump refused to accept that he had lost the election to Joe BidenSHANNON STAPLETON/REUTERSIn Greensboro, a Democratic stronghold in a vital swing state, De’Liberto is doing what she can to define those perimeters for poll watchers for the Guilford County Republican Party. She knows that being an observer can attract controversy, saying she will keep her team “out of jail and out of court” — though she admitted that a former volunteer from the county was facing legal action over a previous misdemeanour. Ballot stuffing and stealingHowever, she has also promoted the sort of long-debunked conspiracy theories that Democrats say are laying the groundwork to contest the election should Trump lose. She says a Hebrew Academy in a nearby county was “bringing in undocumented children” and repeats a common claim among Republicans that illegal immigrants are using driver’s licenses to secure and cast votes. Advertisement“There’s about seven million illegals that have come in across the border over the last three and a half years,” she says. “If only 5 per cent of those people voted, it would change the election this year. That’s a real concern.” Her job would be easier if there was a “list out there of [all America’s] illegal immigrants,” she adds.In practice, election officials say the checks and balances built into each state system make it near-impossible for non-citizens to register to vote. A database of fraud cases collected by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, lists fewer than 100 examples of non-citizens voting between 2002 and 2022, out of more than one billion lawfully cast ballots. The penalties for voter fraud range from fines to prison time.A protest on November 7, 2020, in Pennsylvania as it emerged that Biden had wonTHE MEGA AGENCYIn Arizona, Pima County’s Republican Party goes further than De’Liberto in its guidance for poll watchers. Examples of “critical incidents” that volunteers might observe, the committee’s training material says, include: ballot box stuffing, ballot stealing or harvesting (where absentee votes are gathered and submitted by a third party), voter suppression and voters being “turned away”.Ballot harvesting, illegal in Arizona but not all states, was a notable concern, says Bob Dohse, a Republican committee member in Pima County, adding that they were also on the lookout for nonprofit organisations filling out and casting ballots on behalf of clients, typically immigrants. If these votes are taken to dropboxes in the middle of the night, says Dohse, “there’s no check and balance on where it came from. If it’s just out somewhere in a community with no one watching it, it’s a ripe opportunity for somebody to cheat.”Danger to democracy?Jess Marsden, of Protect Democracy, a non-partisan advocacy group, says poll watchers are an essential part of the US political landscape and “provide an additional legitimacy to an election result”. However, she warns, “we have seen in recent years that observers can interfere with the voting and counting process — that’s especially true when they’ve been equipped with conspiracy theories”.AdvertisementShe points to the example of a voting centre in downtown Detroit — in the swing state of Michigan — which was closed during the 2020 election when the site was overrun with observers, leading to aggressive confrontations and people “banging on the door demanding access”.Election challengers confronted ballot counters in Detroit, 2020CARLOS OSORIO/APJEFF KOWALSKY/AFP/GETTY IMAGESThe expectation that the outcome of the vote will be contested has been further heightened by recent law changes and false claims made by Trump. Last week, he claimed Democrats were exploiting an overseas voting programme for expats and military members to circumvent US identity checks. Before that, the Georgia state election board ruled that ballots must be counted by hand, a move expected to delay the reporting of results.• The vote count was chaotic in 2020. Will it happen again?Experts like Cohen and Marsden believe that, while election centre flashpoints will not alter the outcome of the nationwide count, they could cause considerable delays and disturbances that further fuel overall distrust in the electoral system.Patrick says that in anticipation of potential conflict at the polls, election officials across the US have reviewed their guidelines for dealing with and removing problematic observers, from both the left and right, as well as educating voters on what observers will have access to.AdvertisementRead moreWho will win the election? Latest pollsWhat will Harris do if she wins — and what are Trump’s plans?The electoral college explainedMost states have guidelines on who can observe, how many people can do so and what observers can and cannot do, with the final say on any dispute falling to the chief judge of each voting site. “Election officials are participating in table-top exercises to stress test these policies and sanctioned responses,” Patrick says. The question is whether their interventions will reassure invested volunteers like De’Liberto or add to their concerns. “We just want to make sure that our elections are legal and fair,” De’Liberto says.WorldRelated articlesDISPATCHThe US election vote count was chaotic in 2020. Will it happen again?September 06 2024, 8.10pmDavid Charter, Hillsborough, North CarolinaIN MAPS AND CHARTSTrump v Harris: latest polls and predictionsNovember 05 2024, 10.00pmTom Calver, Data EditorPROMOTED CONTENTBack to topGet in touchAbout usContact usHelpThe Times Editorial ComplaintsThe Sunday Times Editorial ComplaintsPlace an announcementClassified advertisingDisplay advertisingThe Times correctionsThe Sunday Times correctionsCareersMore from The Times and The Sunday TimesThe Times e-paperThe Sunday Times e-paperThe Sunday Times Wine ClubTimes Print GalleryThe Times ArchiveTimes Crossword ClubSunday Times DrivingTimes+The Sunday Times Rich ListTravelGood University GuideSchools GuideNewslettersBest Places to LiveBest Places to StayTimes AppointmentsPodcastsTimes Money MentorTimes LuxurySportswomen of the Year AwardsBest Places to WorkPuzzlesMore from News CorpThe AustralianBarron'sDow JonesFinancial News LondonInvestor's Business DailyMansion GlobalMarketWatchRealtor.comThe SunTimes Literary SupplementThe Wall Street Journal© Times Media Limited 2025.Registered in England No. 894646. 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