Project will prepare volunteers across US to monitor polls, encourage early voting and respond to disinformation
The Democrats intend to train tens of thousands of volunteers to monitor the polls and counter possible voter intimidation under a new plan to protect November’s US midterm elections from anticipated interference from Donald Trump and his allies.
The nationwide initiative, dubbed the New Battlefield Project, will help state Democratic committees build up a vast coalition of volunteers to monitor the polls, push voters to cast their ballots early and create a network to respond to disinformation.
The Association of State Democratic Committees (ASDC), an arm of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), plans to train volunteers across 57 states and territories. It hopes to train volunteers for 25% of the nation’s 95,000 election day polling places, focusing on districts with competitive races.
If this wasn’t the DNC, I would say it was a great thing. Wish it was independent of party affiliation.
Fascists will definitely claim this is the real voter intimidation
Well as with this article, a fairly involved search turned up only this story - no info on how to sign up or when or anything else.
Lots of articles about it happening, just nothing about the program itself.
Mistimed the press release maybe?
You and I can start planning. I want to sign up too.
Local elections often need help at the polling places. My Dad helped out every year for many years, until he got too old. It’s a long day, which starts around 4 am,band goes until around midnight. The good news is you get paid. I think you get paid for the training, too.
You’ll be inside, handing out, and collecting ballots, and making sure all goes well. Normally, everything is fine. My Dad said that he’d NEVER had any kind of incident in many years of working the polls, but this election may be different. Poll workers may have their hands full in some places.
So call your local voter registration office, and see how to become an official voting official. They almost certainly need you.
And don’t be nervous! There will be a lady named Carol there who’s been doing this for 30 years and she doesn’t take any shit from anybody.
For the states I did this in, it was a straightforward process to sign up online and complete the training online.
It is a very long day, but I think it’s very satisfying. Sometimes it would be crazy, other times it would be very sparse for people coming in. People have all kinds of questions and it’s fun to help them participate.
People who are voting for the first time for whatever reason make it worth it. Whether they don’t have a system like this in the place they emigrated from, or were here the whole time and just didn’t bother, sometimes people are really excited to be involved and it’s really energizing. I’ll get the same snarky comment from 100 people and it won’t discourage me as much as one voter who’s really happy to be there builds me up.
If you have the time, I highly encourage getting involved. See how it works where you’re from, sign up, be there for your community.
Because “Democrats” is vague, it’s the DNC:
The Association of State Democratic Committees (ASDC), an arm of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), plans to train volunteers across 57 states and territories. It hopes to train volunteers for 25% of the nation’s 95,000 election day polling places, focusing on districts with competitive races.
These volunteers will wear blue vests to provide a visible presence intended to counter any voter intimidation, including by federal agents. Each state party has a trained election protection director.
