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Republicans are forming what they call an army of Trump supporters to monitor electoral procedures.
By Danny Hakim, Stephanie Saul, Nick Corasaniti and Michael Wines
Trump’s crusaders’ organization came here with mobile phones and made the decision to assist in the president’s re-election efforts in Philadelphia, but they were asked to leave the city’s newly opened satellite polling stations on Tuesday after learning of local electoral law. did not allow them to monitor the electorate who came here to request full ballots by mail.
On social media and right-wing news sites and Tuesday night’s presidential debate, President Trump and his crusade temporarily warned of a negative target in the movements of local election officials, and the president said in the debate that “bad things happen in Philadelphia. “and urges his followers around the world to “go to the polls and look very carefully. “
The grim and baseless descriptions of Philadelphia’s voting procedure were trump’s latest full-scale attempt at Trump’s campaign to undermine confidence in this year’s election, a message delivered in a disturbing tone in the debate when he pleaded with an extremist group, the Proud Boys. , to “back down and remain alert” in his comments on the election.
The sinister insinuations and calls on his supporters to monitor election activity are clear, which is less evident is how Trump’s crusade made this happen.
Trump and his crusade seem to have two ways, one supposedly an advanced edition of the most commonly familiar electoral procedures, such as ballot observation, the other anything from a Pandora’s box with some bars.
In the first, Justin Clark, a lawyer for Trump’s campaign, told a conservative organization this year that he intends to “mobilize some 50,000 volunteers for the election, from early voting to voting day, so he can see the ballots. “The party leader in Philadelphia said Wednesday that there would be several election observers at each and every site in the city, which would mean at least 1,600 Republican observers in Philadelphia alone.
Thea McDonald, spokesman for the Trump campaign, said the operation was mandatory because “Democrats have demonstrated their lack of reliability in this election cycle. “He added: “President Trump’s volunteer observers will be trained to ensure that all regulations are implemented. equally, that all valid ballots be counted and that any violation of Democratic regulations be overturned. “
In recent weeks, Trump’s crusade has conscientiously distributed educational videos to lawyers for potential election observers across the country, describing what they can and do as they follow the voting process, imploring them to be courteous to “even our Democratic friends. “Election observers, will contest the ballots and eligibility of the electorate, but they do not intend to interact with the electorate itself.
Electoral rights teams are concerned that the effort will turn into voter intimidation, but the question is the extent to which Trump will come to exhort a vote that the president has relentlessly and baselessly described as a risk of widespread fraud.
The Republican National Committee was only allowed to take part in the vote because the courts filed a consent decree in 2018 that had prevented them from doing so for three decades and partly after the party began an operation to intimidate the New Jersey electorate in 1981.
From now on, ballot observers get express instructions: in Michigan, for example, they are told to record all paper jams, while Arizona observers get a detailed breakdown of state voter identity requirements.
But while official election observers are trained in legal proceedings, Trump and some of his closest replacements, in addition to his confidant Roger J. Stone Jr. and his son Donald Trump Jr. have recently introduced conspiracy theories that also resemble gun calls.
During a recent appearance on “The Alex Jones Show,” a far-right radio show that sells conspiracy theories, Stone said the Nevada ballots deserve to be confiscated by federal marshals, saying they are “already corrupt” and that Mr. Trump deserves to nationalize state police. Mr. Stone, a criminal whose sentence was commuted this year through the president, has ties to the Proud Boys.
In a video calling on Trump supporters to sign up for an election brigade called “Army for Trump,” Donald Trump Jr. also made allegations of fraud without evidence.
“The radical left is preparing the word to borrow this election from my father, President Donald Trump,” Trump, the youngest, said in the video, posted on Twitter.
While President Trump did not condemn the debate to violent white supremacists, his own national security analysts said in a risk assessment that extremists pose “the lingering and fatal maximum risk in the country until 2021,” according to a September draft assessment obtained through the New York Times.
The evaluation stated that “outdoor parties publicly available with physical electoral infrastructure,” in addition to polling stations and voter registration events, can simply be “hot spots of possible violence. “
Many were dismayed by the president’s tactics. Nevada Attorney General Aaron D. Ford, a Democrat, tweeted Tuesday that telling supporters to “go to the polls and look very carefully” amounted to intimidation. “For his information, voter intimidation is illegal in Nevada,” he wrote. Believe me when I say it: do it and you will be persecuted.
Lauren Groh-Wargo, executive leader of Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group, said Trump and Republicans “continue to have interaction in those voter suppression efforts because they know that if we have free and fair elections, they will lose. “
And Benjamin L. Ginsberg, a retired republican election attorney, said Trump’s comments were “several degrees beyond his crusade and the RNC described his operations plans on Election Day,” adding that comments put “defenders of his crusade and the RNC in the position of having to respond to how they plan to exercise their army of 50,000 election observers to act in elections. Day. “
While Trump and his allies allow electoral discord, official voting observers should watch educational videos that provide a legalistic view of their role, which state electoral law strictly limits.
Both sides are looking for voluntary election observers, a procedure that Republicans in the past carried out at the state point as a component of the consent decree. doors a closed area designated to vote. Questions should be directed to the component hotline or election staff, not voters.
But these legal complexities are already disappearing with the start of early voting. Trump and members of his family circle have tweeted accusations against Philadelphia, and right-wing news organizations have amplified the message that election observers are “forbidden” to vote in advance.
“As you know today, there was a big problem,” Trump’s Tuesday debate. “In Philadelphia, they went to see, they were called observers of the ballots, something very true, very nice. They were deported, they weren’t allowed, you know why? Because bad things happen in Philadelphia, bad things happen.
But city officials said they were enforcing the law and would continue to do so.
“We have law enforcement officers, we have protocols in a position to make sure the entire electorate is safe,” said Omar Sabir, a Democratic commissioner in the city of Philadelphia. “Do not allow anything or intimidate you to exercise your right to vote. “
In addition, Sabir noted, the seven sites in Philadelphia were satellite electoral offices where the electorate can request, complete and mail ballots; they were not official polling stations and were not open to election observers.
Those deemed to be breaking regulations and the decorum to which pollsters will have to stick will be removed, said Nick Custodian, assistant commissioner in Philadelphia.
“Observers on Election Day are there to watch, and many of them will review score sheets or which electorate has advanced to vote so far, but they can’t intimidate people,” Custodio said.
Martina White, president of philadelphia County Republicans, said the names were still accumulated for certification amid a massive effort to practice ballots. what happens there, just as a voting practitioner would on Election Day, when other people vote. “
Activity in Philadelphia came 10 days after Trump supporters chanting “four more years” interrupted early voting in Fairfax, Virginia, forming at one point a line that the electorate had to go outside the site.
The Republican status quo has many reasons to avoid accusations of intimidation of voters. In the early 1980s, after the party sent contracted personnel dressed in bracelets with the “National Ballot Security Task Force” to New Jersey’s black and Latino districts to challenge voter eligibility, it operated under an increasingly strict federal consent decree that in the end prevented it from complying with or giving recommendations on any kind of “ballot security” activities. , including through unpaid volunteers.
Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine, said that due to the president’s influence, the Republican National Committee may be related to the same kind of habit that led to the decree by consent. The 2017 federal court ruling lifting the consent decree indicated in a footnote that Trump had obviously encouraged voter suppression in the 2016 presidential campaign, but that his habit may not be related to the national party.
Now, however, he controls the party.
“While I got involved in Trump’s violation of criteria in 2016, it’s much worse than a president-in-office undercovers the integrity of the election,” Dr. Hasen said. “Whether Trump needs to say what he says or not, he convinces his top fervent supporters that the only way to lose is by cheating with Democrats. “
He added: “It’s deeply destabilizing and frightening. “
Jennifer Steinhauer, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Robert Draper contributed to the report.
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