Voting under vigilant watch

Parties report uptick in monitors for polling sites

AUSTIN — Spurred by Donald Trump’s insistence the November election is rigged and will be plagued by widespread voter fraud, Republican officials in Texas’ largest counties are reporting a spike in the number of volunteers signing up to monitor polling places.

The boost in GOP poll watchers has stoked concerns about voter intimidation among civil rights groups and Democrats, which are planning to counter with teams of lawyers, election hotlines and volunteers to keep an eye on Republican monitors.

Top-ranking Republican elected officials in Texas frequently raise the specter of voting improprieties, pointing recently to an ongoing ballot harvesting investigation in Tarrant County that Gov. Greg Abbott referred to on Twitter as the “Largest Voter Fraud Investigation in Texas History.”

The national and state stir over potential voter fraud, according to GOP chairmen in Bexar, Tarrant, Dallas and Travis counties, has led to more

Republicans stepping forward to monitor the election. In most situations, local officials say they have not even had to put out calls for volunteers — they have flooded in on their own.

Bexar County, for example, typically has 30 to 40 people sign up to monitor polling locations. This year the number is expected to jump to around 200, Bexar County Republican Party Chairman Robert Stovall said.

Dallas County Republican Party officials said they have trained more poll watchers this year than in 2012, which a spokesman attributed to more polling locations and higher expected voter turnout. Travis County’s Republican Party also has seen an increase in poll-watching interest.

In Tarrant County, the reddest of the state’s five largest counties, Republican Party officials said they are having a hard time keeping up with demand.

“I can’t go to an event in the county where I don’t have people say ‘I want to be a poll watcher,’” said Tim O’Hare, chairman of the Tarrant County Republican Party, adding he expects 150 to 200 people will monitor polls. “The reality is, we’re having trouble keeping up with all the requests. It’s a barrage. We’ll have more then we’ll need.”

Harris County has had its controversy over Republican-led poll-watching activity in the past. In 2010, the county attorney requested a monitor from the U.S. Department of Justice observe the voting process after complaints surfaced of poll watchers “hovering” over voters, “getting in their face,” and talking to election workers.

‘Nervous about the narrative’

Republican Party officials in Harris County declined to provide specifics about their poll-watcher program for the upcoming election.

Alan Vera, chairman of the party’s ballot security committee, said the county party is “implementing no programs or processes beyond its normal range of activity” this year.

For their part, Democrats and civil rights groups say they are gearing up their own volunteers in equally large numbers.

Harris County Democratic Party Chairman Lane Lewis said his team trained a record number of poll watchers for the general election and has had to add classes. The party has trained nearly 100 people to participate in some capacity at the polls, about half of whom expressed interest in being poll watchers, Lewis said. This weekend’s classes are expected to turn out another 90 to 100 people, he added.

Zenén Jaimes Pérez, spokesman for the Texas Civil Rights Project, said a coalition of groups will have about 200 people manning phone lines at call centers and observing election activities at polls around Harris County.

“We think Harris is going to be a location where we’re going to see a lot of uptick in Republican poll watchers and problems given the national climate,” Pérez said. “People are nervous about the narrative they’re hearing that there could be some disruption.”

Trump’s call to his army of followers to serve as election monitors has raised new attention to the subject, but large-scale pollwatching efforts in Texas are not new and are subject to stringent regulations.

Russian request to watch denied

On Friday, the issue took a new twist when it was reported that Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma have denied requests by Russian officials to be present at polling stations during the Nov. 8 election.

The Oklahoma secretary of state’s office said it received a letter in August from Russia’s consulate general in Houston seeking to have one of its officers present at a voting precinct to study the “US experience in organization of voting process.”

The office denied the request, noting Oklahoma law prohibits anyone except election officials and voters from being present while voting is taking place.

Texas is among about a dozen states that “explicitly prohibit or restrict international election observers,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

A spokeswoman for the Texas Secretary of State’s office did not respond to requests for comment Friday, but a U.S. State Department spokesman dismissed it as “nothing more than a PR stunt.”

Federal officials this month accused Russia of coordinating the theft and disclosure of emails from the Democratic National Committee and other institutions and individuals in an attempt to influence the outcome of the election.

Texas officials have summed up a poll watcher’s basic duty as follows: observe the election and report any potential violations of state law.

Poll watchers must be registered voters in the county and are allowed to enter a polling place but are barred from talking to voters, accessing a voting station when a ballot is being prepared or recording sounds or images.

They also are not allowed to speak to election officers other than to call attention to an irregularity in the process.

According to a newly issued handbook from the Texas Secretary of State’s office, poll watchers are instructed to look for illegal activity that includes “election workers who allow voters to cast a regular ballot without presenting an acceptable form of ID or presenting a supporting form of ID and signing a reasonable impediment affidavit.”

A federal court recently diluted the state’s voter ID law to allow people who lack one of seven state-approved forms of photo identification to cast a regular ballot by presenting an alternate ID and signing an affidavit.

“Voter fraud is something we have known about for years, but we finally have somebody that is running for office that is saying it,” said Stovall, the Bexar County GOP chair. “It’s not like we’re out there searching for it, but we want to make sure everything is on the up and up.”

Rumors of disrupting voting places

Chad Dunn, an elections lawyer representing several plaintiffs suing the state over its voter ID law, said poll watchers observing election activity can help keep things in order. But he said, tea party groups in Texas previously have dispatched poll watchers to minority voting precincts in an “effort to intimidate and keep people from voting.”

“We’re already hearing chatter about people intending to go in and disrupt polling locations,” he said.

GOP poll watchers in large part will be directed to monitor heavily Democratic polling locations.

In Tarrant County, Republicans will have enough manpower to have someone monitoring activities at every polling site, either in the form of a poll watcher or a presiding or alternate election judge.

The Dallas County GOP declined to say how many volunteers are involved or to which areas of the county they will be dispatched, adding that poll watchers will go “where we feel ballot integrity is most likely to be threatened.”

Bexar County’s GOP said its first batch of poll watchers likely will target “troublesome locations,” which Stovall said generally tend to be Democratic precincts.