{"id":12560,"date":"2016-11-04T08:04:07","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T15:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/trump-tells-backers-to-watch-the-polls-but-signups-slow\/"},"modified":"2016-11-04T08:04:07","modified_gmt":"2016-11-04T15:04:07","slug":"trump-tells-backers-to-watch-the-polls-but-signups-slow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/trump-tells-backers-to-watch-the-polls-but-signups-slow\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump tells backers to ‘watch the polls’ – but signups slow"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON<\/strong> \u2014 Donald Trump regularly warns his crowds to closely watch polling places to prevent Democrats from stealing the election. But his campaign has failed to enlist many to serve as official poll watchers in major population centers, according to spot checks by The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

In some key regions, Democratic monitors will far outnumber Republicans on Election Day.<\/p>\n

The Trump team seeks volunteers on his website to \u201cHelp Me Stop Crooked Hillary From Rigging This Election.\u201d But it\u2019s unclear what the campaign does with its list \u2014 voters in Arizona and Virginia who signed up were never contacted.<\/p>\n

While specific rules vary from state to state, poll watchers generally are registered voters appointed by the campaigns to sit in polling places and observe. They can point out potential problems to election officials and, in some states, challenge whether a voter is actually eligible. But they cannot campaign for their candidates or confront voters themselves.<\/p>\n

In many of the largest cities in battleground states, Democratic poll watchers are set to substantially outnumber Republicans. Even in Philadelphia, a place Trump has singled out as being at high risk of vote fraud, there has been no surge in Trump poll watchers. The city had a total of 4,200 signups as of last week \u2014 only about 480 of them from the city\u2019s 119,000 Republicans.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m handling everything, and I would say this is about average,\u201d said Joseph DeFelice, the head of Philadelphia\u2019s Republican Party. DeFelice said he is concerned about how Republicans are treated on Election Day in some overwhelmingly Democratic neighborhoods, but said he isn\u2019t worried by the absence of more observers.<\/p>\n

When roughly 1,500 Republican poll watchers volunteered for the 2004 election, \u201cthat was way too many,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Democrats will have three to four times the number of poll watchers that we do.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear why there is a discrepancy between Trump\u2019s rhetoric urging poll watchers and the lack of signups: whether it was a failure by the campaign to organize or if it was never truly a true campaign priority.<\/p>\n

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests by The Associated Press by phone and email to discuss the issue.<\/p>\n

In Pennsylvania and some other battleground states, poll watchers can still be registered. But in hotly contested Florida, it\u2019s already too late: the registration period ended Oct. 25.<\/p>\n

In Miami-Dade County \u2014 containing 999 precincts and more than 10 percent of Florida\u2019s voters \u2014 Trump\u2019s campaign has registered only 150 poll watchers, compared to the Clinton campaign\u2019s 903. The local Republican Party registered 88 more \u2014 but even including those, Democratic poll watchers in Miami-Dade will outnumber Republicans nearly four to one.<\/p>\n

In other counties, Trump\u2019s poll watchers are more evenly matched or even outnumber Clinton\u2019s. But after surveying election officials in Florida\u2019s 10 most populous counties, the AP found that Clinton\u2019s people far outnumber Trump\u2019s. Local Republican committees helped narrow the gap but did not close it.<\/p>\n

Trends are difficult to interpret among Florida counties that provide historical data. In Duval County, which Mitt Romney carried with 51 percent, Romney\u2019s 277 election observers in 2012 have shrunk to just 60 for Trump. In Orange County, which Obama won with 59 percent of the vote, 20 poll watchers registered for Mitt Romney in 2012 have exploded into 294 for Trump.<\/p>\n

Carolyn Bourland, a retired teacher in Orlando, said Trump\u2019s campaign encouraged her to become seriously involved in an election for the first time of her life.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like being an investigator. You have your eyes and ears,\u201d she said. She said she was worried about genuine attempts to rig the election. \u201cIt\u2019s shocking how much of this stuff is going on,\u201d she said. But she said she was clear on the limitations of her role.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not allowed to campaign for any candidate, and if you see something suspicious, you go to the person in charge,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In some of Ohio\u2019s biggest population centers, Republicans have preserved their options to send in election observers. In both Cuyahoga and Franklin counties, which Obama won with 69 percent and 60 percent, respectively, local Republican officials have submitted tentative paperwork to have a poll watcher in each of the counties\u2019 roughly 825 precincts.<\/p>\n

But Franklin County GOP Central Committee Chairman Brad Sinnott said he expected few, if any, of those slots would be filled.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat would be pointless,\u201d said Sinnott, who also sits on the Franklin County Board of Elections. Under Ohio\u2019s bipartisan election administration system, Republicans and Democrats both share oversight of elections, rendering serious concern about improprieties moot, he said.<\/p>\n

At the Trump campaign\u2019s request, Sinnott said the local party has reserved spots for observers. If people want to fill them, actual election workers will provide them with a chair, if available, and \u201cnormal human courtesy,\u201d Sinnott said.<\/p>\n

But Sinnott doesn\u2019t expect either Democrats or Republicans to turn out in force for election monitoring. They\u2019ll have better things to do Nov. 8.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur local parties will be trying to influence election behavior,\u201d he said. \u201cNot watching others vote.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 Donald Trump regularly warns his crowds to closely watch polling places to prevent Democrats from stealing the election. But his campaign has failed to enlist many to serve as official poll watchers in major population centers, according to spot checks by The Associated Press. In some key regions, Democratic monitors will far outnumber […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":12561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-12560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12560"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=12560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}