politico zach montanaro. zach, walk us through the examples you cited that take us to michigan? yeah, good morning, jonathan, michigan is really the hot spot of this, the most concerning and most recently made public was in a county called kent county, a poll worker allegedly inserted a usb drive in what s called a poll book, a list of where the reporters is after the august primary. the election officials there announced an investigation there recently in conjunction with the local law enforcement, and that poll worker has been charged with a pair of felonies because there are other incidents there as well. a county party in michigan, a republican county party in michigan, encouraged poll workers and poll watchers to bring their cell phones and potentially, you know, pen and pad into the polling place and the tabulation center which is a big no-no, and during the
election as well, one of the candidates reportedly told poll workers if you see something wrong, unplug a machine which is obviously not what you should be doing at a polling place. so, zach, what are some ways to prevent something like this from happening? what safe guards are being put in place? right. so what is being put in place? yeah. unlike, you know, an election denier becoming, an election official itself, secretary of state or clerk, the challenges being a poll worker is a little bit more, you know, less concerning. it s still a big concern but a lot more safeguards in place. the biggest one is that these folks are end of the day still employees of the county, their town, whatever the local jurisdiction is and can be dismissed. poll workers typically don t work alone. they work in teams so someone were observe a bad poll worker doing something wrong. in most states, many states, at least, election officials strive