Sean
Hannity to Trump: "Are you going to have poll watchers?"
Trump to
Sean Hannity: "We're going to have everything. We're going to
have sheriffs, and we're going to have law enforcement, and we're
going to have, hopefully, U.S. attorneys, and we're going to have
everybody, and attorney generals.”
– Fox
News (August 20, 2020)
Donald Trump wants the
polling places in America to be intimidating places to certain
voters. His plan is a disenfranchisement tactic involving the
intimidation of armed poll watchers. Trump has repeatedly claimed,
without evidence, that voter fraud will undermine November's election
results. He is now desperate to win reelection and plans to
manipulate the vote in his favor.
A very clear federal law
bars the President (or any other person in the United States
government) from sending “any troops or armed men” to any polling
place in the country. This law prohibits, for instance, the troops
that were sent to Portland (or any other military troops) from being
deployed on election day at the polls. It also prohibits the
President from sending non-military law enforcement, such as United
States marshals, FBI agents, or U.S. attorneys to election sites if
they are armed, which marshals and FBI agents usually are.
(David S. Cohen. “Nope,
President Trump Can’t Send Troops or Law Enforcement to Your
Polling Place. Rolling Stone. August 21, 2020.)
Dale Ho, director of the
ACLU's Voting Rights Project, told ABC News the president can't give
orders to local sheriffs and can't send federal forces into polling
places.
"There's no law
that I'm aware of that permits, or that would authorize, the
president to deploy federal law enforcement or military or anything
like that for domestic use in and around in or around polling places.
Just checking someone's ID at the door doesn't really do anything
from an election security perspective – from a voter intimidation
perspective, I can see how having law enforcement ask people for IDs
when you're entering into a polling location could be intimidating."
(Luke Barr. “Trump
says he wants police at polling sites. Experts say that's unlawful.”
ABC News. August 21, 2020.)
Of course, Trump has a
history of ignoring federal criminal law and the Constitution.
However, Kristen Clarke, who oversees the Lawyers' Committee for
Civil Rights Under Law, called Trump's pledge "an old and
familiar tactic pulled right from the Jim Crow playbook and often
specifically targeted at Black voters and voters of color."
Clarke believes his voter suppression scheme is intended to
intimidate voters and cause a chilling effect on the electorate"
and "would likely run afoul of laws that prohibit intimidation
of voters."
Clarke said her group
would "use every tool in our arsenal to block thinly veiled
efforts aimed at discouraging participation by eligible voters this
election season."
(Fredreka Schouten.
“Trump pledges to send 'sheriffs' and 'law enforcement' to polling
places on Election Day, but it's not clear he can.” KCTV News.
August 20, 2020.)
A defining feature of
Trump’s presidency is his ritualistic deployment of armed state
officials – the U.S. military, federal agents – on American soil
for expressly partisan political ends. For example …
“As protests and
riots roiled American cities following the killing of George Floyd in
Minneapolis, the president urged state governors to “dominate”
the dissidents and threatened to send the military to
Democrat–governed cities, where much of the unrest was
concentrated. He drafted local police officers to teargas and assault
nonviolent protesters near the White House so he could walk through
Lafayette Park and pose for a photo op in front of a church.
“As his approval
numbers continued to decline — and his polling deficit against
Democratic challenger Joe Biden widened to double digits nationally —
Trump made good on his threats to deploy armed agents to Democratic
cities, sending fatigue-clad troops from a consortium of agencies,
including ICE and the Border Patrol, to Portland, Oregon, weeks after
the city’s most unruly demonstrations had died down.”
(Zak Cheney-Rice.
“Trump’s Election-Day Gambit.” Intelligencer. August 21,
2020.)
Trump has committed to
escalating these tactics. He has threatened to send more agents to
Democrat–run cities to impose “law and order,” and in some
cases he has actually done so, albeit in a capacity different from
what Portland experienced. Zak Cheney-Rice
concludes …
“Even less clear is
the degree to which he’s willing to pursue work-arounds — like
deploying his own federal agents again, rather than sheriffs or
police — or threaten officials with funding cuts to force
their compliance. The outcome may not look exactly the way he
describes it.
“It may materialize
as officials disrupting transportation routes or thwarting rideshare
efforts that help get people without vehicle access to the polls. He
may not follow through at all. The only sure thing is that every time
the president has threatened to use law enforcement to advance his
political interests during an election season, he has done so, and
each iteration has been progressively more severe.”
(Zak Cheney-Rice.
“Trump’s Election-Day Gambit.” Intelligencer. August 21,
2020.)
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