“As opposed to somebody coming up and voting 15 times for Hillary”. “I have to be honest”, Trump whined earlier this month at a campaign stop in OH (another key swing state where he’s down by an average of 2.6 points in the latest polls). But Republicans claim they can turn that around.
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Some reporters noted just that, but said the problem was the way Trump was talking about the elections.
Even as polls show Clinton in the lead, the former secretary of state has faced lingering questions about her trustworthiness in the fallout of her use of a private email server as secretary of state and over her family’s sprawling foundation.
Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, a Republican, said a surge of Trump-inspired poll watchers would be welcome, so long as they undergo training after the state receives their names.
If you’re an observer and see someone come back to the polls after already having voted, that’d be a red flag, and you can report it to election officials. “What’s different is that he is couching it in an incendiary way by saying “crooked Hillary” wants to steal the election”.
“We’re going to watch Pennsylvania”.
At a rally in Altoona Friday evening, Trump says he plans to watch certain parts of Pennsylvania closely on Election Day. “With our economy still sour, Mrs. Clinton’s broken promises as senator to create 200,000 jobs (statewide) and the growing threat of terrorism, New Yorkers will be reminded of her failed record and looking for a new direction for the country”.
The state’s voter ID law was struck down in 2014. During the 2008 election in Philadelphia, two members of the New Black Panther Movement were charged with voter intimidation after they stationed themselves outside of polling locations.
NY hasn’t been “in play” nationally since Republican Ronald Reagan won the state in his 1984 landslide over Democratic President Jimmy Carter.
In Florida, for example, Obama won by only 1 percentage point. In 1988, former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis carried NY over Republican George H.W. Bush, although narrowly at 51.6 percent to 47.5 percent.
“What he was saying is, it’s going to be a very close election”.
Sitting with [Karl] Rove in the Manhattan apartment of a mutual friend, the casino magnate Steve Wynn, Mr. Trump said [in May] he would compete in states like OR, which has not voted Republican since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide.
“I didn’t know this was coming, but I was glad to hear it”, said Rob Gleason, the chairman of Pennsylvania’s Republican Party.
Indeed, now there might not just be scores of Americans who will take Trump at his word and end up believing that any Clinton victory is illegal, there might be Trump supporters illegally observing the polls on election day, directly empowered by the Trump campaign to look for ways to help prevent a “rigged” Clintonvictory.
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“It’s very common to have people at the polls”, said Rick Hasen, an election law expert and professor at the University of California at Irvine’s School of Law. But in the meantime, Clinton clearly appears to be holding the advantage.
