It has been a few years since I have had to be in the field monitoring a poll, but on November 7th it was an all hands on deck moment in order to win the Massachusetts State Senate special election. Even our Republican National Committeeman Ron Kaufman was part of the effort.
After a long day of monitoring, I have come to the conclusion that every Republican should be encouraged to take Election Day off from work to pitch in to ensure election integrity, because voter fraud is happening. Now most of it is not malicious, but rather incompetence of voters and poll staff.
The first battle I had on that Tuesday was over a voter whose ID did not match the voter list. The Warden (the top election official at the poll) was going to let that person put their ballot through the machine even though it could not be proven he was that person. I brought this to the attention of the Warden who told me that the City Clerk told her it was OK. I responded that the Secretary of State's Office did not agree. Thankfully, the SOS called the City Clerk who then called the Warden.
Of course, I was then disciplined by the Warden for talking on my phone and for taking pictures. I promised not to talk on the phone again, but I would not stop taking pictures.
The next problem was someone voting twice. There were two elections on Tuesday in this city – the special election for State Senate and the city election, so voters were given two ballots. An older gentleman voted and left the polling location. However, a few minutes later a white piece of paper was found on the floor by the ballot box. One of the poll workers declared it the older gentleman's vote and called him back. That's right; she has his cell phone number handy. The Warden grabbed the white paper and declared it spoiled. He was then given another ballot. I was not allowed to see which ballot was so-called spoiled or the new ballot he was given as a replacement. When he went to put his vote into the machine again, he said “I am getting to vote twice today.” At that point, poll workers hushed him pointing out that there was an election observer there! Once again, I had words with the Warden especially when she would not give me the name of the voter. It is private according to her. Wrong!
As the day progressed there were poll workers discussing our opponent with voters and a ton of inactive voters. My favorite moments were when the Warden told inactive voters that they needed ID to vote, because we have a poll observer today.
Then the mail-in ballots were delivered. Those envelopes floated everywhere during the day. Watching the process of these ballots was especially important, because ballots were to be disqualified if there were two in an envelope – one for the city election with an orange label and one for the special election with a yellow label. Well, two envelopes had to be tossed for double balloting. The Warden actually seemed to follow the procedure on this one without a call from the SOS.
But then hours later two mail-in ballots (yellow) for the state election were in the Warden's hand at the check-in table. She appeared to be trying to put them in as votes. When I asked where those ballots came from, my head was bit off. But then she reluctantly put them in a folder not to be counted. Victory.
Most of the issues were plain incompetence, but I was glad to catch every problem I could. When this candidate ran for state representative, his first election came down to four votes! I thought that this election was going to be much closer with two communities having city elections on the same day to help increase the turnout for the Democrats. It wasn't! My client soundly defeated his opponent!
My overall point is that we need more poll watchers on Election Day. I hope that everyone will consider helping out next November nationwide! Let's keep everyone honest!
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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