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Republican Party operatives are developing a "multi-pronged strategy to target and potentially overturn votes in Democratic precincts," particularly in Detroit and Southfield, Politico reports, based on video recordings of organizational meetings. 


Poll worker recruiting is under way. (Photo: Matthew Seifried/Facebook)

The political news site reports:

The plan, as outlined by a Republican National Committee staffer in Michigan, includes utilizing rules designed to provide political balance among poll workers to install party-trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic-majority polling places, developing a website to connect those workers to local lawyers and establishing a network of party-friendly district attorneys who could intervene to block vote counts at certain precincts.

“Being a poll worker, you just have so many more rights and things you can do to stop something than [as] a poll challenger,” said Matthew Seifried, the RNC’s election integrity director for Michigan, stressing the importance of obtaining official designations as poll workers in a meeting with GOP activists in Wayne County last Nov. 6. It is one of a series of recordings of GOP meetings between summer of 2021 and May of this year obtained by Politico.

Backing up those front-line workers, “it’s going to be an army,” Seifried promised at an Oct. 5 training session. “We’re going to have more lawyers than we’ve ever recruited, because let’s be honest, that’s where it’s going to be fought, right?”

The strategy is to game the system, gum up the works when opportunity arises, then challenge the results before local and state boards of canvassers, which have been chosen for loyalty to Big Lie theories; Robert Boyd, the GOP canvasser who replaced Monica Palmer (who delayed certification of Wayne County's vote in 2020) has said he would not have voted to certify it at all. 

The plan "could create chaos" in heavily Democratic areas like Detroit, election watchdog groups say, because workers who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent will disrupt normal functioning. 

(Nick Penniman, founder and CEO of Issue One, an election watchdog group) also expressed concern about the quick-strike networks of lawyers and DAs being created, suggesting that politically motivated poll workers could simply initiate a legal conflict at the polling place that disrupts voting and then use it as a vehicle for rejecting vote counts from that precinct.

The recordings, Politico writes, "among the first windows into what former Trump strategist Stephen Bannon, who’s been urging listeners to his podcast to take on election leadership positions, calls 'the precinct strategy.'” 

► Update: By Wednesday evening, this ad below with last fall's Wayne County recording was posted on social media by The Lincoln Project -- a political action committee formed in 2019 by Republicans working againsty Donald Trump's re-election. 

Read more: Politico