Election deniers in Minnesota are training some election judges, MPR

[progree]

The email from the head of the “Olmsted County Election Integrity” group inviting Jim Anderson to an online training session for election judges looked official. Anderson had served as a judge before, and the email seemed like part of the normal process to prepare him for the 2022 election.

But as he joined the Zoom call, it was clear to him there was nothing normal about the training — and it definitely was not from Olmsted County, which is in charge of training election judges. “They said, well, ‘You know our real president isn’t in office,’” he recalled. “That’s about the time I hit ‘end.’”

Another email from Olmsted County Election Integrity arrived about a week later, this time urging Anderson to rename his smartphone to masquerade as the Wi-Fi network of the polling place where he’d be stationed on Election Day.

The goal, it said, was to capture data being sent over that network and expose an imagined security vulnerability.

The emailer also asked him to photograph vote counting machines and various documents and forward it all to the group’s leader.....

More fun at: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2022/11/04/election-deniers-in-minnesota-are-training-some-election-judges

Dozens of people who’ve raised doubts about elections to Minnesota County boards over the last year appear on rosters of election judges compiled by APM Reports,

Olmsted County Election Integrity is part of a widespread effort across the country by people who doubt the legitimacy of the 2020 elections and who’ve pushed hard in this election cycle to recruit and install poll workers who share their beliefs.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. And are the poll workers going to let false judges malign their efforts?

I'm a poll worker. I have to be at "work" at the polls at 5:00 a.m. and leave at 8:30 that night. I work tirelessly all day. I'm always checking the machines. We take tallies every 2 hours. We give out and protect provisional ballots. We lock and deliver all materials to the town clerk who has police drive the "votes" (cartridges, provisional ballots, etc.) to the county seat's Board of Elections.

There are an equal number of Republicans and Democrats working the polls. We get along fine.

I can't imagine an election-denier judge arbitrarily throwing away our town's votes, esp. with no evidence.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. Training them to be fools. But fools can create messy destructive disruption. . . . nt

[NJCher]

3. Yes, exactly

I have to wonder just how long any human can play into this fantasy world they create.

It’s like play acting.

Pretend world.

Boggles my mind how anyone can waste their time like this.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. Authoritarians think they can gain power this way & RW Authoritarian Followers play their game. nt

[AverageOldGuy]

4. Not just Minnesota

At least two groups are active in Virginia doing the same thing -- the groups are election deniers funded with lots of out-of-state money. They are training poll watchers as well as training people who will volunteer to be Officers of Election -- OE are the people who work inside the polls checking in voters, issuing ballots, preparing reports, etc.

The two groups are:
-- Virginians for America First
-- The Middle Resolution

In one six-county area of Virginia a old, now resurrected Tea Party group calling themselves "The Northern Neck Patriots" have asked local political parties to give them letters authorizing them to be "Official Observers" who can sit inside polling places and "observe" the operations. (The Northern Neck is a group of six counties that form a peninsula -- a "neck" bounded by the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers, the Chesapeake Bay, and the mainland.) To date, the local parties have rebuffed them. The same group has made heroes of a dozen or so Jan 6 terrorists who are housed in a local jail awaiting federal trials.

These assholes are everywhere.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

5. They are remnants of the Olmsted Co. Tea Party Patriots

I know several people a part of this Trump group. Crazy.

[progree]

7. Colorado man accused of tampering with ballot-marking machine

Richard Patton, a 31-year-old from Pueblo, has been charged with tampering with a voting machine — a class 5 felony under state law — and cybercrime, which is a misdemeanor.

... Late on Colorado's primary Election Day, election workers at the Voter Service and Polling Center in the Pueblo Clerk's Office in Pueblo heard noises coming from a voting booth across the room, according to a senior official with the Colorado secretary of state's office. When an election judge went to the booth to investigate and to clean the machine, after a voter had left a booth, in accordance with regular protocol, there was an error message on the screen reading, "USB device change detected. Please call a poll worker for assistance."

... Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold ... "The threats are ongoing," Griswald told CBS News. "They've been ongoing against me since June of 2021... I got an uptick in threats over the last couple of weeks." She estimates that her office has made thousands of referrals to the Justice Department since the 2020 election. ... The lies that the former president and people aligned with him continue to push out are dangerous — they are leading to political violence."

"The 'big lie' is why I have a county working behind bulletproof glass," Griswold continued, referencing new security measures in Salida, the county seat of Chaffee County. "It's the reason that the man who threatened my life is now serving 18 months in prison." '

More: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/colorado-man-accused-of-tampering-with-ballot-marking-machine/ar-AA13K85R?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=f0fc8b994e924205ab40be5f71d6b0f6