Efforts To Prevent Voter Fraud Draw Scrutiny
Along with all the other campaign ads they will hear this week, voters in Minnesota's Twin Cities are being treated to a provocative radio ad.
The ad warns that the group is training thousands of citizens to set up surveillance teams outside polling places to look for voter fraud. It's even offering a $500 reward for information leading to convictions.
"We're just the people concerned about the integrity in our election process," said Dan McGrath, executive director of Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group that alleges that past elections in the state have been marred by fraudulent votes. "We go to vote. We want to know that our vote counts, fairly, and that someone else's ineligible vote isn't diluting it."
His group has teamed up with several others, including the North Star Tea Party Patriots, to launch the poll-watching campaign. And it's not the only effort of its kind this year. Dozens of billboards have gone up in the Milwaukee area showing people behind bars and warning that voter fraud is a felony.
Meanwhile in Houston, a group called the King Street Patriots has launched a ballot-integrity campaign called True the Vote, which has already led to allegations of intimidation during early voting.
"We are seeing trainings cropping up in states across the country of ordinary citizens to challenge voters, to serve as poll watchers," said Wendy Weiser, deputy director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, which is monitoring the efforts. "We're seeing calls for people to mobilize and go to the polls and look out for voter fraud, and we're seeing it to a degree that we haven't seen in years."
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