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As the 2024 election quickly approaches, with just two months left until Nov. 5, fans of former President Donald Trump are settling on a curious refrain.
Trump doesn’t need to beat Kamala Harris.
You might think his most ardent supporters would want him to win, given, well, logic. But the enemy, this time around, isn’t Harris. While she’s rising in polls thanks to a newly energized Democratic Party, Trump fans don’t believe the hype is real.
The real enemy is election fraud. And this time, they’re coming at it proactively.
While Trump waited until after the results in 2020 to challenge their legitimacy, his online army isn’t content to just bemoan after the votes are counted.
Over on Patriots.win, they’re organizing.
“As we saw last time, there will be no justice for a stolen election after the fact,” read a mega-popular thread in the forum. “If we don’t all become poll-workers / election-judges and stop the steal as it’s happening, our nation is done.”
In it, they put links to how to register as a poll worker in counties in every single state, a list of over 200 locations for ardent Trump supporters to judiciously observe election results.
“Just remember, they will try to steal 2024 10x as hard as they did in 2020, but this time around the whole WWIII / Ukraine / Israel / China military apparatus will be assisting in the steal,” they said, echoing Trump’s words after the assassination attempt against him. “We all need to FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!!!”
Prominent counties and cities where the election hinged in 2020 were included, like Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Detroit.
(This being 2024 and the internet, though, a number of the links didn’t work and the original poster got blasted for using ChatGPT to aggregate them. However, a second new thread dropped with working links).
But the corrected thread inspired action.
“Got the call today to schedule my hour long training next week to be a poll worker,” wrote one person in response. “We need EVERYBODY mobilized.”
Links, such as one to Maricopa County in Arizona, include open volunteer roles as inspectors, making sure voters are able to cast their choices privately and without intimidation, marshalls, who maintain the order at polls and are in charge of opening and closing, clerks who provide ballots, and voter registration checkers, who help verify the identities of voters.
All the roles align with concerns and claims Trump and his ilk have made about fraudulent efforts on the left, from people voting without IDs, to polls being kept late too open, moves they believe aid Democrats.
In the thread, posters included tips for gaining as much as possible influence at the jobs.
“When you apply, ask to be on a ballot board. Ballot Boards accept and reject the mail in ballots.” wrote one, flagging another concern of stolen election believers, that mass mail-on ballots were forged on behalf of Biden in 2020.
Others revealed they’d already secured positions.
“I have been judge of elections since 2021 local elections, and we need more people. I’ve got a majority and minority inspector but we don’t have any clerks, so it will be a very long day lol. Sign up folks—you’ll meet some good people and will go to bed on Tuesday night knowing that you did something. I never want to feel that sensation last time where I wish I’d done something beyond just showing up and voting.”
That “something” is left open, but Trump’s most slavish devotees, if they sign up en masse, believe they’ll have the potential to attempt to discard ballots, challenge voters, and potentially swing the election.
“Serious question—in areas that Kamala may actually win, what should we do? Like should we try doing stuff like destroying votes?” one asked.
In response, though, a person highlighted the multiple safeguards in place that Trump fans don’t actually believe exist.
“All registered, eligible voters for my precinct can come to this location and vote. Every tag/certificate, piece of paper, or change to the equipment is done by 2 people, one republican and one democrat. 200% work for everything.”
But some were already noting they were planning on not certifying the election, including in states that could swing one way or the other, such as North Carolina.
“I am a precinct judge in one of the targeted counties in NC. My biggest concern is that, in order to fulfill my oath, we need to compare votes and totals from the dominion machine. We don’t get that data. We only see x amount of ballots used, count of spoiled ballots and the voters count in the machine. I already raised this up to our election board. I will not certify the election if we can’t. I will make this a massive issue.”
Plenty of others hatched plans to bring cameras into the counting rooms, asking if anyone knew the legality of such an action.
But a few worried that the effort was already too little too late.
“We need to be three steps ahead of them. We need monitors at the DMV. The Welfare office. The Immigration Office. Any public government office that registers people to vote. That’s where we need to be. Once they are registered, it’s too late. They can be used for a mail in ballot. That’s how the scam works. It’s not just the polling place.”
But regardless, the list of links was lauded as the greatest achievement in posting of all time.
“This is the most important post that has ever been on this website. If you can do election work in a swing state you could literally be saving the country.”
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