During the first presidential debate Tuesday night, President Trump’s supporters will monitor polling stations on Election Day for fraud.
“I inspire my followers to move on to the ballots and look very carefully, because that’s what you want to happen, I urge you to do so,” Trump said during the chaotic inaugural debate in Cleveland, Ohio. The president continued, “There was a big problem, in Philadelphia they came to look, they are called voting observers, very sure, very well, they were expelled, they were not allowed to look,” he said, adding, “You know why?Because bad things happen in Philadelphia, bad things. “
Election practitioners are practitioners who are part of the paid staff of a government organization, such as states parties, the Republican National Committee, the Democratic National Committee, who practice polling stations for potential problems. Each state has other parameters, but practitioners must be registered to vote in any state or county in which they operate.
Each state also has other regulations and regulations for the number of constituency-consistent election observers, who can be election observers, and what they are allowed to do. In fact, no voter from the Trump campaign, the Republican Party or other Republican campaigns has been qualified to monitor in the city.
And election observers have the same rights in satellite locations as at classic polling stations on polling day.
“We don’t give anyone an election observer certificate for Array . . . watch his poll fill out at the kitchen table,” Al Schmidt, a Republican and one of the city commissioners who organizes the election, told Inquirer Al Schmidt.
Philadelphia election officials have kept civilians very well, who would be thugs, away from satellite polling stations. The other people who showed up did not paint in an official capacity.
Election observers are not election officials who participate in some way in the management of an election, they act as participants in the safeguarding of the vote, making sure that everything goes well. An election observer, for example, can inform election officials of disorders. such as long queues or the lack of election officials in one place.
The president’s call to supporters is different from the call to qualified observers.
“I urge, I urge my people,” Trump said Tuesday. ” I hope it’s fair elections, and if it’s fair elections, I’m one hundred percent of the party. But if I see tens of thousands of manipulated ballots, I can’t settle for that. “There is no evidence of such widespread handling of ballots.
By encouraging their supporters to monitor “fraud” in an unofficial capacity, the president warned them that they are credited with a federal crime. It is illegal in all 50 states for civilians to prowl polling stations and intimidate voters. The president in the past has encouraged supporters to deliberately vote twice, which is also illegal.
Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford responded to the president’s comments with a tweet and a warning: “[He] is not talking about ballot surveillance. Talk about voter intimidation, you do it and you’ll be prosecuted. “
Some states allow election observers to challenge a person’s right to vote, however, a requirement is not unusual across the country: election observers cannot interfere with the voting process. intimidation or interference: the president has continually advised that independent citizens, as well as law enforcement, oversee the voting process.
“We’re going to have sheriffs, we’re going to have law enforcement officers, and we’re going to have American lawyers and we’re going to have everybody and attorneys general,” Trump said of the voting camps in an August interview with Fox News commentator Sean Hannity. Federal law prohibits any “civilian” or “military” federal officer from ordering “armed troops or men” in polling stations, unless they are required to “repel America’s armed enemies. “
The Republican Party is making plans, a multimillion-dollar effort to monitor what happens in polling stations on Election Day, adding efforts to recruit some 50,000 volunteers to act as election observers. act like thugs.
For Georgia’s former Democratic governor Stacey Abrams, such tactics are a family threat. Abraham, who lost to Republican Brian Kemp by a margin of less than 2%, believes that voter suppression led to his defeat. His new organization, Fair Fight 2020, strives to ensure that the entire electorate has to go to the polls and advocate for electoral reform at all levels.
“We have to recognize that voter suppression is no longer the photographs of the 1960s, nor the 1960s legislation banning African-Americans from voting,” Abrams told CBS This Morning last month. “. . . What we’re talking about is you can register and stay on the lists, if you can vote and if your survey is counted. “
“For more than 20 years, we have noticed that many laws have been extended that have eroded their ability to do those things, especially if they are in a marginalized network, a colored network, or a less valuable network for the Republican party,” she said. Adding, “It’s much more insidious. “