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Republican poll watchers claim intimidation by workers wearing 'large' BLM apparel, Internet jokes 'the horror'

The Trump campaign released a 234-page stack of affidavits from poll watchers in Detroit and some of the complaints were downright ridiculous

President Donald Trump has been claiming there was systemic voter fraud that made him lose the 2020 presidential election and so he is refusing to concede to President-elect Joe Biden. His campaign released affidavits from GOP poll watchers in Detroit, Michigan - a state won by Biden - which was supposed to prove evidence of irregularities in the vote-counting process but mostly ended up being a compilation of silly complaints by a bunch of poll watchers including comments on the kind of attires worn by the volunteers who were hard at work tallying ballots and their body types. 

Reuters reporter for Washington DC, Brad Heath, tweeted out relevant snippets from the humungous pile of affidavits on Twitter in a long thread of posts. "The Trump campaign released that 234-page stack of affidavits from poll watchers in Detroit tonight. So far, it's mostly allegations that they couldn't get as close as they wanted to the counting, couldn't re-enter the room after they left, etc. Pretty standard election stuff," he wrote in one of the tweets.

Another tweet that stood out the most in the thread was: "One Republican poll watcher said city workers were wearing Black Lives Matter apparel, and one of them was large." A photo of one portion of a page of the affidavit, the poll watcher's statement read, "I experienced intimidation by poll workers wearing BLM face masks and another man of intimidating size with a BLM shirt on, very closely following challengers, including myself, even though there was supposed to be social distancing going on."

The particular statement was mocked by a number of social media users. "Interesting that this one self identifies as a 'challenger' and not a poll watcher," one said while another commented, "BLM apparel isn't considered election interference. Just like the hundreds of Blue Line masks and shirts I saw also aren't election interference." A third added, "Notice no one says “but the Democrat watchers were allowed 2 feet closer!” NO - because it was a FAIR situation where everyone had to follow the same damned rules!"

One of the users hilariously added, "My goodness, these were some very sensitive poll watchers! I sure hope their tender feelings weren't hurt too badly." Another commented, "Mr 20: I saw a fraud. Sanity: Ok, tell me about it. Mr 20: Black people are scary. Sanity: Right...anyone else?" Someone else pointed out, "Being 'intimidating size' ? Guess the poll workers need to be specific size now?"

The next wrote, "I love how they found a way to rope in BLM. That just screams petty to me. Typical right wing crap" One person quipped, "It sounds like the people complaining wanted to manage the people counting and not observe" And another said, "Oh my how scary, did the republican poll workers fear for their lives?"

Most of the other complaints were about how the poll watchers were unable to observe the process properly as they were required to follow social distancing norms. "A common complaint among Republican poll watchers is that they were told to stay 6 feet away from other people and they thought this made it harder to monitor things," Heath wrote in one of the tweets. Summarizing the affidavits, he wrote, "You get the gist. Many of these boil down to not being able to observe as closely as they wanted, not having questions answered. A bunch are people saying they saw something but didn't know exactly what was happening or why. Some are relatively detailed; most are not."

The journalist explained, "But they're not alleging fraud. A few allege things that made them suspicious, but they offer very little detail," adding, "But the other think they show is a big counting process involving tons of people. And for these types of allegations to add up to systematic fraud, you'd have to make the jump that a *lot* of people were in on it, rather than being imperfect municipal employees."