NYC to dispatch ‘hundreds’ of poll watchers on Election Day: de Blasio
New York City will dispatch poll watchers on Election Day to prevent voter suppression and intimidation, Mayor de Blasio revealed Friday.
Early voting begins Saturday in the Big Apple, a first for a presidential election in the city. But the city’s poll watchers will not fan out until Election Day on Nov. 3, the final day voters will have an opportunity to vote in-person.
De Blasio said the city’s poll watcher effort stems from fears that some die-hard Trump supporters will take cues from the president and attempt to intimidate voters at the polls.
Voters in other states have witnessed standoffs at polls during early voting, and de Blasio said he wants the city to be ready to observe and report similar incidents if they happen in New York.
“For the first time in a long time, we have to be worried about systematic efforts to suppress the vote in communities of color, in immigrant communities — purposeful efforts at intimidation,” de Blasio said on Brian Lehrer’s show Friday. “The president has made very clear that he is intending to try to defy the will of the voters. He’s saying it out loud.”
De Blasio was presumably referring to Trump’s refusals to promise an orderly transfer of power if he’s defeated, and to his message that a white nationalist group should “stand by” when it comes to street violence.
De Blasio said “hundreds” of volunteers from city government would be recruited and trained to serve as poll watchers for the NYC Election Observers Corps.
“I would rather be too vigilant and too prepared to have hundreds of people out at the polls ready to act then be painfully surprised on Election Day by a voter suppression effort,” he said.
