As the campaign continues to stoke fears of a “stolen” election and widespread voter fraud, Trump himself has called on supporters to “go out and watch” the polls. But until now, his appeal for poll monitors wasn’t linked to any organized effort. Enter Roger Stone, the Republican Party’s dirty trickster. Stone will lead a crowd-funded exit poll targeting nine Democratic-leaning cities such as Philadelphia, Detroit, and Charlotte, encompassing 600 precincts that have large numbers of minority voters. With exit poll volunteers potentially including armed vigilante groups like Bikers for Trump and other groups from the controversial Citizens for Trump coalition, this looks more like a voter intimidation campaign than a watchdog effort.
While Stone has long trafficked in conspiracies of “manipulated” voting machines by the Clinton campaign, this is a new tactic. Never mind that exit polls, in general, are often not an accurate gauge of how voters actually voted, or that approximately 80 percent of voters will be using paper ballots.
With Trump’s poll numbers continuing to slide, all signs from his campaign point to an unprecedented wave of dangerous messaging that targets vulnerable voters and districts on Election Day. The Stone-founded organization coordinating the exit poll, Stop the Steal, is also spreading the claim that Clinton plans to “flood the polls with illegals,” which just sounds like code for harassing legitimate Latino and other non-white voters. Which leads us to the question: Who will be watching the poll watchers?