Well, they won the arguments that corporations are people and political donations/bribery is free speech, so let’s not be too dismissive.
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When I vote I walk up to a table and tell a sanctioned poll worker my name. They check their roll of registered voters, confirm I appear on the list, and permit me to vote. The poll worker screens me for eligibility. What is the poll watcher proposing to do that the state hasn’t already made a provision for by employing a trained poll worker to do in the first place? If my name is not on the rolls my understanding is I can allege a mistake of some sort is at play and request a provisional ballot. Those ballots are either allowed and counted, or dismissed, based on a later review of the voter’s registration status. The poll worker can’t prevent me from submitting a provisional ballot, nor allege I shouldn’t be casting a vote despite legitimately appearing on the voter rolls. Are poll watchers actually allowed to intercede and say a poll worker is complicit in a fraud, or negligent, in allowing someone to vote? Would that allegation go so far as to deny the submission of the provisional ballot, the voter standing there asking for one, knowing they’re a legal voter but there’s merely a discrepancy to clear up. Yet here a “poll watcher” has succeeded in denying them even a provisional ballot?
What the hell can a poll watcher actually prevent?
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I suspect this will end with the judge refusing so I don’t know how it will create this problem but I will say this = I’m sure they will do everything they can to fuck up voting conditions and I know Obama isn’t running but I do remember '08 and Florida. They tried everything to keep people from voting and people stood in line for 6 hours and longer to vote. My point is that lately it appears to me that the harder they try to suppress voter turnout, the bigger the turnout gets. People know what they are doing now and refuse to be intimidated.
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I hope you’re right.
Nothing. I was an official poll watcher for a voting PAC in '04. There is really nothing you can do. You can protest allowing someone to vote but it’s not up to you the poll watcher, it’s up to the head of the precinct and there isn’t much besides filing a protest.
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I already voted in Indiana because I didn’t want to mess with the BS on election day. I tell you if I did vote and saw one of these Poll watchers for Trump acting out at a polling station. Their would be a verbal confrontation between myself and this Trump poll watcher.
One big problem is that those provisional ballots often don’t get counted.
Great. Let’s send every one these jerks to Philly so they can get a front row seat while an entire city votes for Hillary.
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Citations please?
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There is an FBI voting number that has circulated on facebook. If you can find it take it with you and call the FBI Voter line and report it if someone is doing that.
That’s what I’ll do but I won’t need it because I’m voting early and I doubt there will be one poll watcher there. I doubt very much.
IF we should have learned one thing these last years, it’s how much goddamn noise the GOP makes and how little actual action ever occurs.
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Agreeing with @antisachetdethe, but another traditional use of poll watchers is to check off a list of their party members to ensure they came to vote.
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Poll watching is very specifically not about freely expressing your personal and political beliefs.
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The only thing that a poll watcher is supposed to prevent is ballot box stuffing. When I served as a poll watcher, we were watching the precinct workers more than the voters. At the end of the night, one poll watcher rode in the car transporting the ballot box to the counting station.
ETA: Of course, I was a poll watcher in Texas, where there is a long tradition of stuffing the ballot box. In 1948, not only did the dead vote for LBJ, they showed up to vote in alphabetical order the day after the election. 
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Yeah - that’s what I did mainly. I watched the totals on the voting machines and matched them with the voter totals on the sign in sheets, but that was barely necessary because nothing untoward happened. I’m in a white precinct, so let’s face it, I didn’t go where the trouble usually is because they aren’t my precincts.
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Thanks for that. That is exactly right.
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I hope these guys show up a lily-white, almost all republican voting precinct, to observe the voting!
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What, is your Google broken?
I have been thinking something similar. What we have to remeber though is that poll watcher is trained and restrained by their states laws. What HOTOG is suggesting is more their version of the supposed Black Panther intimidation: watching the doors, seeing who shows up in the parking lot, walking the line outside the electioneering limits etc. I am wondering if this suit is a head-fake.
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Poll watchers are not governmental agents. They’re not in the employ of the state, at least as I understand it. If I was told to transport a ballot box to the central election office and some guy I didn’t know summarily demanded to get in my car I think “No, you’re not welcome in my vehicle, you’re trespassing.” would be my reply. If the state wants chaperoned transport of ballot boxes then the state should provide agents for that purpose. Having a poll watcher that is avowedly a partisan of one political party accompany the ballots is no answer to ballot security. What if a decidedly Dem county has a Trump loyalist ferry ballots to the central office with a poll worker?That assures ballot security??
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