They cheat in a thousand different ways. In NY, one of the big ways is that they bus huge amounts of people and have them vote at every polling place. Poll watching cannot prevent every kind of cheating, but it will lower the amount of cheating overall. Even electronic manipulation may show up in an audit, so they need something physical to back it up, which again poll watching will help.
If we cut out a large chunk of their cheating, then if our candidate is popular enough, he'll win.
It's a nice idea but if they manipulate the numbers electronically it won't matter that the poll watchers may testify to seeing more R than D votes.
They cheat in a thousand different ways. In NY, one of the big ways is that they bus huge amounts of people and have them vote at every polling place. Poll watching cannot prevent every kind of cheating, but it will lower the amount of cheating overall. Even electronic manipulation may show up in an audit, so they need something physical to back it up, which again poll watching will help.
If we cut out a large chunk of their cheating, then if our candidate is popular enough, he'll win.