Report: Alt-right group says it plans to disrupt election in Philly with '40s and weed'

Updated: November 2, 2016 — 12:21 PM EDT

3 x 2 vote sign voting booths — **(AP Photo/M. Spencer Green, File)**
Politico reports that neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin claims to have partnered with an alt-right site to monitor polling places and intimidate voters in Philadelphia and elsewhere on Election Day. But the Southern Poverty Law Center points out that the white supremacists involved are “serial exaggerators.”

Camera icon — **(AP Photo/M. Spencer Green, File)**
Politico reports that neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin claims to have partnered with an alt-right site to monitor polling places and intimidate voters in Philadelphia and elsewhere on Election Day. But the Southern Poverty Law Center points out that the white supremacists involved are “serial exaggerators.”

by , Staff Writer @njvadala

A white supremacist alt-right group says it plans to hand out liquor and marijuana in Philadelphia as a way to suppress minority voting, and claims to have already secretly set up surveillance cameras in some polling places in the city, according to a report.

As Politico’s Ben Schreckinger writes, neo-Nazi leader Andrew Anglin claims to have partnered with the alt-right site TheRightStuff.biz to monitor polling places and intimidate voters in Philadelphia and elsewhere on Election Day. The group says it plans to accomplish its goal through handing out “40s and weed” in “the ghettos in Philly,” according to an email sent to Politico.

“We also have some teams going in to the ghettos in Philly with 40s and weed to give out to the local residents, which we think will lead to more of them staying home,” read the email sent by an unnamed TheRightStuff.biz team member. “We have had success with this in the past.”

Weed refers to marijuana; 40s refers to 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor.

District Attorney Seth Williams said Wednesday his office was gearing up to prevent voter fraud or intimidation.

"The coverage of this upcoming election is unlike anything we have seen before, not to mention the fact that one of the nominees for president has been making false allegations about the integrity of Philadelphia’s elections for weeks now, but we are ready,” Williams said at a news conference.

Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center points out that Anglin and TheRightStuff.biz are “serial exaggerators,” so it is difficult to determine to what degree their apparent plans are actually being implemented. Those plans, Potok added, could also likely backfire.

“If, on the morning of Election Day, it turns out that we have white supremacists standing around looking threatening at polling places, I think it would arouse anger,” Potok told Politico. “People would vote just to prove they’re not being intimidated by these radical racists.”

Anglin, the editor of the neo-Nazi publication Daily Stormer, told Poltico he plans on “sending an army of Alt-Right nationalists to watch the polls” on Election Day. TheRightStuff’s anonymous spokesman, meanwhile, said that the site has hidden surveillance cameras at some polling places around the city.

“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,” the RightStuff spokesperson wrote in an email to Politico. “If we see people voting in multiple locations the footage will be submitted to the FEC as well as put out on social media.”

TheRightStuff spokesperson also added that in regards to the surveillance cameras, “pretty much any official-looking white person with a clipboard can gain access” to a polling place to install one. As a result, theRightStuff claims that “we already have a few set up.”

Additionally, Roger Stone, an ally and advisor to Donald Trump, told Politico that he plans to target some 7,000 precincts throughout the U.S .for exit-poll monitoring, 2,000 of which he says are in Philadelphia. Stone says he will consider fraud present should the precinct totals and his exit-poll totals be more than 2 percent off.