William Brangham:
It’s also been backed by former President Trump, who continues to lie about the results of the last election.
In February, he urged his supporters to become precinct committee members to — quote — “take back our great country from the ground up.”
So, to help us understand this strategy and what it means for elections and for our democracy, I’m joined again by Rick Hasen. He’s a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of the new book “Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics and How to Cure It.”
Rick Hasen, always good to see you.
Can you help us understand, what is this precinct strategy all about?
Rick Hasen, University of California, Irvine: Well, the first thing to remember is that, even though we hold national elections every four years for president, we don’t conduct a single election. We conduct something like 10,000 different elections.
Everything is hyper-localized, right? So, while there’s been a lot of focus on secretary of state races and on governors, really, they’re the line workers, people who check you in at the polling place, take your ballot, maybe scan your ballot into a machine.
It’s down to that level where we see people who’ve embraced the big lie being recruited by one of the political parties to come in and serve not as a poll watcher, which we have seen a lot of in the past, you know, someone observing what’s going on in the polling place and maybe reporting to their party, but a poll worker, someone who should be having allegiance to the election body that is actually running the election, but who is now being told they should be reporting what they see via an app to a political party.
