The Michigan Republican Party is planning to dispatch more than 100 attorneys to polling locations across the state on Election Day to “catch and discourage instances of voter fraud” as GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has warned the voting process is “rigged.” Michigan Republican Party Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel said in a recent fundraising letter that she has instructed party attorneys “to prepare a massive statewide anti-voter fraud effort to go along with our last-minute get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts. I won’t let Hillary Clinton steal this election from Donald Trump,” McDaniel wrote in the Oct. 10 fundraising plea. McDaniel said she was trying to raise $48,000 to pay for canvassing, phone calls to voters and “placing over 100 Michigan Republican Party attorneys in the field to catch and discourage instances of voter fraud.”
Steven Ostrow, executive director of the state Republican Party, said lawyers are stationed in polling precincts for each election to be on hand in case there are challenges over a voter’s identity. “That’s nothing new,” Ostrow said Wednesday. “That’s what we do every year.” But Trump has raised the specter of Clinton and the Democrats orchestrating widespread fraud at the ballot box — a controversial claim independent fact checkers have called false but Trump’s Michigan campaign director defended on Wednesday.
The New York businessman has raised an important question about ballot integrity, Scott Hagerstrom said during a “Capitol Morning Brew” forum with Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Brandon Dillon, who called Trump’s accusations “absurd” and “dangerous.”
Hagerstrom pointed to reports that voter registration systems in Illinois and Arizona have been the subject of recent hacks, although he acknowledged the evidence suggests “actual manipulation of data has not occurred.”
Full Article: Michigan GOP on guard against ‘massive’ voter fraud.