“Election Integrity” or Voter Intimidation?
Texas Republicans are pushing changes to election laws that would let partisan poll watchers record voters in polling places.
Texas Republicans are pushing changes to election laws that would let partisan poll watchers record voters in polling places.
During a March webinar, Bill Ely pulled up a map of Harris County while presenting the local Republican Party’s ambitious plan for the 2022 midterms: building an “army” of 10,000 conservative election monitors. Ely, a local Tea Party leader who heads the committee within the Harris County GOP dedicated to ballot security, pointed to the northwest Houston suburb where he lives, where “almost seven out of 10 homes are Republican.” Ely stressed to other party leaders on the call the importance of recruiting more election monitors from neighborhoods like his, then he dragged the cursor down to the heart of the city. Pointing to majority Black and brown neighborhoods, Ely said the party needs people with “the confidence and courage to come down in here in these areas where we really need poll workers, because this is where the fraud is occurring.”