Placing operatives as poll workers and building a “hotline” to friendly attorneys are among the strategies to be deployed in Michigan and other swing states.
Video recordings of GOP party operatives meeting with grassroots activists reveal a developed plan to target and attempt to overturn votes in Democratic precincts.
In a nutshell, the plan is to install recruits as election poll workers trained to challenge voters at Democratic-majority polling locations, and give them a hotline to party attorneys.
Matthew Seifried, the RNC’s election integrity director for Michigan, was on record in GOP meetings stressing the importance of obtaining official designations as poll workers, not just challengers.
And there will be an army of lawyers to back up those poll workers with their challenges to voters.
“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?”
In a May 2022 training session, Seifried said he’d achieved a goal set last winter: More than 5,600 individuals had signed up to be poll workers and, several days ago, he submitted an initial list of more than 850 names to the Detroit clerk, Janice Winfrey. Winfrey oversaw the 2020 election at the TCF Center in Detroit, where volunteer GOP poll watchers overwhelmed the scene and police were called to intervene.
The pressure is on the Detroit clerk, and Winfrey confirmed she has received an expansive list of more than 800 names of GOP applicants, and she is prepared to give many of them roles. Winfrey says she always reaches out to both parties to recruit workers but gets mainly Democratic workers from a majority Democratic voting city.
“We’re going to have lawyers that work to build relationships with different judges so that when that happens, we’re going to have lawyers that have relationships with the police chiefs in the different areas, with the police officers in the different areas so that when that happens with preexisting relationships already established so that they can’t lie,” Seifried said during an October 2021 training session in Oakland County.
Tim Griffin, legal counsel to The Amistad Project, who partnered with Trump/Giuliani efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is looking to “trap” the Detroit clerk. The strategy is to build a list of workers that Winfrey would likely reject, and open the door for a lawsuit.
When informed of the tapes, Winfrey said she is “not shocked” and “not in any way intimidated.”
“Apparently they think I’m stupid,” she said. “Apparently they think I don’t follow the law. I’m not surprised by their ignorance.”
Politico’s Heidi Przybyla explained her report in the following clip.
Seifried’s Outline
Retired Michigan elections director Chris Thomas says that Seifried is downplaying his “Stop The Steal” tactics, but sees that “they’re going to be all ginned up thinking they’re going to see all kinds of stuff.” Thomas warns that if they create chaos, “that’s just going to get them [the poll workers] thrown out.”
More details are here at Politico.