Washington: White supremacist groups backing Donald Trump are planning to "watch polls" in areas populated by blacks by installing hidden cameras at polling locations and distribute liquor and drugs to keep away those likely to vote for Hillary Clinton, according to a media report.
The National Socialist Movement, various factions of the Ku Klux Klan and the white nationalist American Freedom Party all are deploying members to "watch polls", either "informally" or, they say, through the Trump campaign, the Politico reported.
Neo-Nazi leader Andrew Anglin plans to muster thousands of poll watchers across all 50 states.
His partners at the alt-right website "the Right Stuff" are touting plans to set up hidden cameras at polling places in Philadelphia and hand out liquor and marijuana in the city's "ghetto" on Election Day to induce residents to stay home, the report said.
The Oath Keepers, a group of former law enforcement and military members that often show up in public heavily armed, is advising members to go undercover and conduct "intelligence-gathering" at polling places, and Trump ally
Roger Stone is organising his own exit polling, aiming to monitor thousands of precincts across the country.
Energized by Republican nominee Trump's candidacy and alarmed by his warnings of a "rigged election", white nationalist, alt-right and militia movement groups are planning to come out in full force next Tuesday, creating the potential for conflict at the close of an already turbulent campaign season, the report said.
Plans of monitoring the polls by White Supremacists in Black-dominated areas have raised fears of possible violence.
"The possibility of violence on or around Election Day is very real," Mark Potok, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, was quoted as saying.
"Donald Trump has been telling his supporters for weeks and weeks and weeks now that they are about to have the election stolen from them by evil forces on behalf of the elites," he said.
Anglin, the editor of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website, was quoted as saying he had already led a "big voter registration drive" and that he was "sending an army of Alt-Right nationalists to watch the polls".
Anglin said he was working in conjunction with the alt-right website TheRightStuff.Biz.
A representative of that site was quoted as saying in an email, "We are organising poll watchers in urban areas to cut down on the most traditional type of voter fraud. We also will have stationary cameras hidden at polling locations in Philadelphia, to monitor anyone that comes in to vote and make sure that the same people are not voting at multiple locations."
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