Springfield Republicans and Democrats Employed Different Strategies on Election Day

Depending on your district, you may have noticed an extra Republican presence at the polls.

Springfield’s Republican party had placed several “challengers” at voting sites collecting names of voters. Challengers are typically on hand to question the legal claims of voters to enter polls. But the challengers sent out by Republicans were instead recording votes, ticking off names of registered Republicans who had and had not yet voted.

That information was recorded and passed on to Republican volunteers, who contacted registered Republicans who hadn’t yet voted to urge them to get to the polls. Politicians are not allowed to campaign within 100 feet of a polling site, but the challengers were not campaigning, but just recording information. Republican volunteers elsewhere were making the calls.

Speaking before the votes were tallied, Springfield Democratic Chairman David Barnett and Democratic State Assembly candidate Bruce Bergen questioned the effectiveness of the strategy, noting that the Democrats had also called all of their registered members systematically in the run-up to the election, beginning on Sunday.

“If you go out and call people who haven’t voted at 5, you’re only giving them from 5 to 8 to vote,” Bergen said.