Time November 2/November 9, 2020‘ARMED
MILITIAS ...
COULD LEAD TO
THE INTIMIDATION
OF VOTERS
UNDER THE
GUISE OF POLL
WATCHING.’
—DARYL JOHNSON, FORMER
DHS SENIOR ANALYST
SCARE
TAC T IC S
THE TRADITION OF POLL WATCHERS
‘PROTECTING THE VOTE’ HAS TAKEN
AN INTIMIDATING TURN
By W.J. Hennigan and Vera Bergengruen
“
if you’ve ever voTed, you’ve probably seen a
poll watcher: they’re the quiet, modestly dressed
folks standing to one side, observing the orderly pro-
cess of democracy unfold. It’s a service provided by
your neighbors, Democrat and Republican alike, that
is supposed to give us all a little extra confidence that
our elections are free and fair. “We’ve done it every
election year as far back as I can remember,” says
Steve Knotts, a veteran Republican organizer
in Northern Virginia’s Fairfax County. Prop-
erly trained to follow local election rules,
“they’re simply another person at the poll-
ing place,” says Knotts.
And then there’s President Donald
Trump’s version of a poll watcher. In recent
months, official Trump campaign advertise-
ments have adopted the stark language of
wartime recruitment, calling on support-
ers to “enlist today” so they can join the
“top ranks” alongside “battle-tested Team
Trump operatives.” In one widely shared
video ad, Don Jr., Trump’s eldest son, says,
“The radical left are laying the groundwork
to steal this election from my father... We
need every able-bodied man and woman
to join Army for Trump’s election security
operation.”
If that sounds scary, it’s supposed to, say
Democrats and voting-rights advocates. The
Trump team’s martial talk is intended to mobi-
lize his voters and deter those who support his oppo-
nent, former Vice President Joe Biden, says election-
law expert Rick Hasen at the University of California,
Irvine. “I can think of nothing in recent history that’s
even close to this,” he says. “Trump is a candidate of
a different era—an era when voter suppression was
seen as acceptable.”
Most voters don’t seem particularly frightened
by Trump’s attempt to turn mundane poll watching
into an action-hero role. More than 2.3 million peo-
ple had voted in person by Oct. 20, according to the
U.S. Elections Project, a data base run by Michael Mc-
Donald with the University of Florida. Florida saw a
surge of in-person voting as polls opened Oct. 19, and
in Georgia, three times as many people had voted in
person by Oct. 20 as at the same point in 2016, ac-
cording to a survey of election officials by CNN, Edi-
son Research and Catalist.
The concern, even among some of Trump’s
most senior law-enforcement officials, is that his
campaign’s rhetoric could end up getting peo-
ple hurt. Right-wing extremist groups, including
QAnon, Proud Boys, Boogaloos and so-called mili-
tia groups, have all called for a physical presence at
polling places, says Frank Figliuzzi, the FBI’s former
counter intelligence director. “The mobilization has
already occurred,” he says. “The specter of people
who are violent in nature and have violent agendas,
and often come armed with long guns is becoming
a very real possibility.”
Efforts are under way to prevent intimidation and
violence. Election officials are reviewing security
plans for their local polling stations. Social-media
platforms are monitoring calls to suppress the
vote. State attorneys general have instructed law
enforcement to arrest and charge anyone who
intimidates voters or election workers. “You cannot
use those positions to try and interfere with a
person’s right to vote,” Michigan attorney general
Dana Nessel said on an Oct. 6 call with the press.
“We have to draw the line.”The Trump Team’s TacTics may seem familiar to
older voters in some parts of the country, and not just
the Deep South where Jim Crow voter- suppression
measures were once widespread. During the 1981
New Jersey gubernatorial election, the GOP was
caught hiring off-duty law-enforcement officers to
“monitor” minority precincts and require Black or
Latino voters to show registration cards. In primarily
Black and Latino neighborhoods around Houston in
2010, members of a Tea Party–affiliated group, True
the Vote, were accused of “hovering over” voters and
“getting into election workers’ faces,” according to
Assistant Harris County Attorney Terry O’Rourke.
After the 1981 incident, the courts imposed a
consent decree on the Republican National Com-
mittee, forcing it to submit all of its poll-watching
plans for review by a judge. The decree expired in
December 2017, and Trump campaign operatives
got to work. “We were really operating with one
hand tied behind our back,” Trump’s deputy cam-
paign manager, Justin Clark, told an audience at the
Conservative Political Action Conference in March.
Detailing plans to recruit 50,000 Republican vol-
unteers to become poll watchers in 2020, Clark
told the group, “We’re going to have scale this year;
we’re going to be out there protecting our votes.”
That sentiment soon appeared online, taking on
an overtly militaristic tone. Protecting our votes be-
came defend your ballot, and scale became an army.40