Andrew Anglin, a Neo-Nazi leader, is reportedly planning to organize thousands of “poll watchers” across all 50 states to engage in voter intimidation and suppression. His partner group, the alt-right website The Right Stuff, says they plan to set up hidden cameras at polling places in Philadelphia and “hand out liquor and marijuana in the city’s ‘ghetto’ on Election Day to induce residents to stay home,” according to Politico. The National Socialist Movement, an assortment of Ku Klux Klan chapters, and the American Freedom Party are each involved in the poll-watching planning, all in the hopes of electing Donald Trump to be president.
In addition, a group of heavily armed former law enforcement and military members who call themselves The Oath Keepers are advising their members to infiltrate polling places to conduct “intelligence-gathering.” Trump surrogate Roger Stone, for his part, is organizing supporters to conduct exit polling nationwide.
“The possibility of violence on or around Election Day is very real,” Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center told Politico. “Donald Trump has been telling his supporters for weeks and weeks and weeks now that they are about to have the election stolen from them by evil forces on behalf of the elites.” According to Potok, it’s hard to know what exactly will happen on election day, since the alt-right tends to over-exaggerate their plans. He also thinks their plan will backfire.
“If on the morning of Election Day it turns out that we have white supremacists standing around looking threatening at polling places, I think it would arouse anger,” he said. “People would vote just to prove they’re not being intimidated by these radical racists.”
(Via Politico)