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ICYMI: Pete Snyder Wants “NFL-Style Scouting Reports” On Election Officials

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The Virginia GOP primary has become an all-out battle over who can be the Trumpiest candidate – and Pete Snyder’s here to play ball. During a local GOP event, Snyder said he wants to “compile ‘NFL-style scouting reports’ on local election officials” to prevent election fraud.


Snyder also announced this week he appointed failed gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli to lead a “ballot security operation” to ensure the election is not stolen from him.


Snyder is peddling the same baseless lies about voter fraud in the 2020 election that led to the January 6th insurrection and undermined confidence in our election systems – all in a pathetic effort to pander to Donald Trump’s base in Virginia.


It’s going to be tough to be the number one draft pick for Trumpiest candidate this year – Amanda Chase urged Trump to “declare martial law” and even attended the rally on January 6th leading up to the insurrection; Glenn Youngkin started an eerily similar “election integrity task force”; and Sergio de la Peña told the Washington Post “we may never know how much fraud occurred” because of “hasty and illegal changes” to voter laws. Additionally, five of the six VA GOP gubernatorial candidates still refuse to accept Joe Biden as a legitimate president.


Read more about Snyder’s extremist election proposals below.


HuffPost: Virginia GOP Gov. Candidate Wants ‘NFL-Style Scouting Reports’ On Election Officials


A Republican candidate for Virginia governor pledged this week to ramp up poll-watching and compile “NFL-style scouting reports” on local election officials, diving headlong into the sort of conspiracy theories and efforts to undermine faith in elections that animated former President Donald Trump’s losing campaign last year.


Pete Snyder, a businessman who launched his campaign for governor in January, suggested during a local GOP event that he wanted to place poll-watchers at every polling site in the state and have details on the political affiliations of Virginia election registrars. He argued it was necessary to root out potential election fraud. 


The calls for Republican voters and campaigns to monitor polling sites are similar to those Trump made last year, when he began peddling baseless claims of rampant voter fraud to undermine confidence in the electoral system months before the 2020 election. Democrats and voting rights groups warned that the Trump campaign’s attempts to mobilize an “army of poll watchers” searching for fraud where none exists only risked intimidating voters and election workers at polling sites.


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As governor, Snyder said he would “make sure Virginia is No.1  in the nation in ballot security and electoral security laws,” a talking point Republicans nationwide have used to justify a rash of legislative proposals that would place new restrictions on voting. In some states, they have pushed to allow increased poll watching and monitoring.


Snyder is one of six Republicans seeking the party’s gubernatorial nomination, which it will award at a statewide convention in May. Some Virginia Republicans have desperately tried to steer the party away from its devotion to conspiracy theories and increasingly radical candidates, in an effort to arrest a decline that has seen the Virginia GOP lose two consecutive gubernatorial contests and control of the state Legislature.


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