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Poll Workers Train for Conflict: ‘A Little Nervous? I Am.’

Milwaukee’s top election official surveyed about 20 poll workers gathered in a classroom in a city building stuffed with election supplies, then spoke frankly about the tense environment they may face next week when the city expects more people watching their work than ever before.

“So who is worried about observer disruptions?” Claire Woodall-Vogg, head of the Milwaukee Election Commission, asked the group. “Who has read things or heard things on the news, and you’re a little nervous? I am. I’ll raise my hand,” she said, smiling.

A few of the workers raised their hands, too. They’re not alone in their concern: Election officials across the country are bracing for confrontational poll watchers fueled by lies about the legitimacy of the 2020 election spread by former President Donald Trump and others, even after Trump’s loss was upheld by repeated reviews, audits and recounts, and courts rejected legal challenges.

That tension is higher in the handful of battleground states like Wisconsin, where Trump and others were quick to cry fraud after late-arriving results from Democratic-dominated Milwaukee helped Joe Biden narrowly carry the state in 2020. Recounts demanded by Trump confirmed Biden’s victory.

Woodall-Vogg has already felt the pressure. In an interview, she described being harassed and threatened after that election via email, phone calls and letters to her home — threats serious enough that she has an assigned FBI agent to forward them to.

Still, Woodall-Vogg said she’d rather she be a target than her workers — some of whom have stepped down from managerial roles because of the pressure. “We’re not paying them millions of bucks to endure that stress by any means,” Woodall-Vogg said.

Election officials nationally are concerned about a flood of conspiracy theorists signing up to work as poll watchers, with some groups that have trafficked in lies about the 2020 election recruiting and training watchers, particularly in swing states like Wisconsin.

Wisconsin requires poll workers to be trained only every two years, but this year Milwaukee is offering much more frequent training than in elections past, including informational videos and one-hour sessions focused on specific topics, like voter registration. The content remains unchanged.

In the mid-October session observed by The Associated Press, Woodall-Vogg was presenting to an experienced group of poll managers — known as chief inspectors — who will be responsible for directing workers at individual polling places. The managers get a flat payment of $325 for Election Day duties that begin before 7 a.m. and can stretch into the wee hours of the next morning. Non-managers get $220.

When the training turned to how to handle potential problems, Woodall-Vogg was careful to note that observers play “a vital role in our democracy.” But she also said she didn’t want her workers to feel threatened by them.

She demonstrated how to tape off sections where observers can stand — between 3 and 8 feet from voter check-in and registration areas.

“Take your tape and make a line and say, ‘This is the observer area,’ or make a box and say, ‘Please don’t leave this area,'” she said.

Violators first get a warning; if they do it again, they’re ordered to leave. If someone refuses, police are called.

Woodall-Vogg also walked the workers through how to handle challenges to voter eligibility based on a voter’s race or the language they speak. Such challenges are unacceptable, Woodall-Vogg said, and should get a warning as frivolous. An observer who makes a second such challenge would be ordered to leave.

Some poll workers who spoke to AP said they expect to see conflict, but they’re ready for it.

“I have a calling to serve,” said 70-year-old Andrea Nembhard, who has worked elections for more than a decade. She added: “I’m not afraid.”

Melody Villanueva, 46, said the same.

“I’m a problem solver, so I will de-escalate if necessary, and I will have to call the proper authority if necessary,” she said. “I am not one to fear much.”

Some workers acknowledged their nerves.

Averil Fletcher recounted calling the police during the August primary when a voter — convinced he had been deliberately locked out of the polling place — threw chairs and threatened workers. She had to wait 35 minutes for officers who had been busy elsewhere handling a pair of shootings.

Woodall-Vogg assured the managers that Fletcher’s experience “will never happen again.”

“If there is an election disturbance, if someone’s refusing to leave the polling place and you’ve issued them an order to leave, we have a direct line and there will be officers that will respond to support you,” Woodall-Vogg told the chief inspectors.

Federal law enforcement will also be on standby. Four assistant U.S. attorneys are assigned to oversee Election Day in Wisconsin and deal with threats of violence to election staff and complaints of voting rights concerns, and the FBI has stationed agents throughout the country to address allegations of election fraud and other election abuses, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Thanks to increased interest, the city hit full election staffing levels with two weeks to spare, which Woodall-Vogg said has never happened before.

“Usually it’s more panicking, filling in gaps,” Woodall-Vogg said.

That included five times as many partisan nominees to be election workers than in previous elections, but Woodall-Vogg said she’s not worried about bad actors because the system is designed to prevent issues. Election inspectors always have multiple eyes over their shoulder as they work: a second inspector is required to sign off for each task, and chief inspectors are monitoring all workers.

“Anyone who might have bad intentions, we would immediately, I think, be able to identify,” she said.
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Immigrants Face Off in California Congressional District

A congressional race in California between two immigrants, one from Pakistan and the other from South Korea, reflects the changing demographics of the American electorate. Mike O’Sullivan reports that abortion and the economy are at the heart of rival messages in the November 8th midterm election.
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With US Midterm Vote, Massachusetts Cambodians Flex Local Power

For Cambodian American residents of Lowell, Massachusetts, the upcoming midterm vote is chance to voice concerns on a list of local concerns familiar throughout the U.S. — potholes, schools and housing costs.

Sreang Heng, the Cambodia-born owner of Heng Heng Auto Repair near Lowell’s Koumantzelis Park-Roberto Clemente Baseball Field, said potholes are taking a toll on his customers’ vehicles, which come to him with damaged tires and tie rods. While this means more work for auto repair shops like his, he’d rather not have it because of the social cost, especially to those who cannot afford to make all the repairs needed at one time.

“Most of them complain the spare parts are expensive because taxes are already included, so they bargain for the reduction of service charges,” said the 46-year-old who arrived in the U.S. in 2016.

Located on the Merrimack River, Lowell is 50 kilometers north of Boston. An early center of America’s once-thriving textile industry, Lowell has attracted European and Latin American immigrants since the 19th century. In the 1980s, Cambodian refugees fleeing civil war and the murderous regime of the Khmer Rouge began arriving. Today, the city of about 115,000 residents is nearly 25% Asian, home to the nation’s second-largest Cambodian community in America after Long Beach, California.

But in a city where minorities are close to the majority, according to U.S. Census data, white residents held most of elected positions until recently.

The change came when a coalition of Latino and Asian American residents filed a civil rights suit in 2017. Their attorney, Oren Sellstrom, argued Lowell violated his clients’ voting rights by electing officials on a citywide basis. The plaintiffs and the city settled in 2019, agreeing to establish districts that better represented the city’s diverse neighborhoods.

The changes in Lowell mirror those rippling through the U.S., which the Census has projected will have a population with a majority of minorities within decades. And the evolution of the Cambodian community as one that has progressed from nominal representation to exerting political power in the city and state is a path to assimilation well-worn by earlier immigrant groups.

Lowell now has eight districts, two of them with a majority of non-white voters. The city elected a Cambodian-born mayor, Sokhary Chau, in 2021. He took office in January along with two Cambodian American council members who were also born in Cambodia.

Mony Var, 56, is the first Cambodian to work for the Lowell Election Commission. In the 1990s, the city had 30,000 Cambodian residents, but only 123 Cambodians were registered to vote. Now, about 2,000 Cambodians are registered to vote. He said midterm and primary elections are as important for the community as the general election.

Mony Var, who arrived in the U.S. in 1980, said while voters may be disinterested in the midterms, “All elections are important. We must take the opportunity and fulfill the duty to vote in every election. Don’t only come to vote on the presidential election.”

The midterm focus of the Cambodian community on issues like potholes and schools suggests the validity of the oft-repeated maxim of U.S. life, “All politics is local.”

Sovann Khorn, who arrived in the U.S. from Cambodia via the Khao-i-Dang refugee camp in Thailand, runs a party-service business that also provides video and still photography for weddings, and dress rentals. The 57-year-old wants Lowell schools to crack down on students’ misbehavior and limit their video-gaming time.

Rodney Elliott, a former Lowell mayor and city council member, is a Democrat running to be state representative for the 16th Middlesex District against Republican Karla Miller. The district is home to many Cambodians.

Elliott, who is not Cambodian but who has visited Cambodia twice, said when he was mayor in 2014 he raised $300,000 for victims of a fatal fire, some of whom were Cambodians. He also commissioned a statue of Cambodian refugees for City Hall’s front yard.

Miller, a first-time office seeker, said there are few Cambodians in Chelmsford, her home base.

“I would love to reach out to the Cambodian community. … This is my first rodeo, so I don’t know a lot of people in different communities,” she said.

State representative for the 17th Middlesex District, Vanna Howard, 52, arrived from Cambodia in 1980.

In 2020, she was the first Cambodian woman elected to be a state representative in the U.S., motivated by “the need to give back to a place which has been so good to me,” according to her website.

Howard is running unopposed for reelection this year. She told VOA Khmer that voters ask her for help with a variety of issues, including unemployment, and improving schools, roads and bridges.

“And another one is housing,” said the Democrat. Lowell faces a housing shortage and the available options are expensive, she said, adding, “They want [my] help to keep prices on housing from going up too much, [to find] funds for housing.”

Insurance company owner Mony Var, 56, arrived in the U.S. in 1981 and now lives in the 18th Middlesex House District. He said local representatives “should listen to businessmen in the area to write high-standard business law that help local business[es] prosper and to bring in other businessmen to our area.”

Veteran state representative Rady Mom, 54, who arrived in 1982, is a Democrat and running unopposed after defeating two Cambodian-born challengers for the 18th Middlesex House District in the September 6 primary. According to U.S. Census data, the district population is about 41% white, 32% Asian, 17% Hispanic and 7% Black. Thirty-one percent of the residents are foreign-born.

John Cluverius, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, told the Boston public radio station WGBH before the primary that the race among three Cambodian-born candidates showed how the community was moving beyond just seeking representation.

“It’s not that this coalition and this community is fighting for its political existence anymore or its simple representation,” Cluverius told WGBH. “But, instead, you see a community that looks like any other community with political power, which is that the divisions within start emerging more, and so you start seeing challenges within that community to incumbent representatives in that community.”

Or as Rady Mom, who in 2014 became the first Cambodian American state lawmaker in the U.S., put it, “My role is listening to people, convey their messages. If I don’t work for them, every two years, voters can vote me out and pick my challenger. That is democracy.”
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Biden Pushes Strong Jobs Market as US Midterm Elections Near

U.S. President Joe Biden has pushed his economic agenda while campaigning for his Democratic Party before the November 8 elections, but high inflation, energy prices and economic anxiety caused by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine make the economy a tough sell. VOA’s Anita Powell reports.
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Economy, Abortion Top Concerns as Voters Elect New US Congress

U.S. voters are weighing heavy issues as they head to the polls this November. From inflation to abortion rights, to border security and crime, concerns about the direction of the country will motivate voters to either keep Democrats in power or give Republicans a chance to control both the U.S. Senate and House. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from the voters. Videographer: Scott Stearns
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