Here's Why Trump Telling Supporters To Watch The Polls Could Be An Even Bigger Threat This Year
By: Alison Durkee (Forbes)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Alison DurkeeForbes StaffBusiness
Topline
President Donald Trump urged his supporters at the debate Tuesday night to "go into the polls and watch very carefully," further escalating fears about voter intimidation as Republicans enter the election with more freedom over poll watching than they've had in any presidential election since 1980.
U.S. President Donald Trump participates in the first presidential debate against Democratic ... [+] presidential nominee Joe Biden at Case Western Reserve University on September 29, 2020 in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Key Facts
Poll watchers, who work at a polling place to ensure votes are correctly counted or point out potential issues, must be appointed in advance and cannot just show up to the polls—instead, each state has their own method for employing poll watchers, and many only allow parties or candidates to appoint one poll watcher per polling place.
Private citizens who aren't poll watchers are still allowed to challenge voters' eligibility in many states.
Republican poll watchers have historically been stopped from using methods that could be considered voter intimidation—which is officially illegal under federal law—by a consent decree that's been in place since 1982, after Democrats sued the Republican National Committee for sending off-duty law enforcement officers as "ballot security" to New Jersey polling places that served predominantly Black and Hispanic voters.
The consent decree has blocked the RNC from using potentially intimidating "ballot security" measures to dissuade Democrats at polling places, and made it possible for Democrats to hold Republicans in contempt of court if they do.
The consent decree continued to be extended over the ensuing decades, but ultimately expired in 2018, making 2020 the first presidential election since 1980 without the consent decree in place and in which the RNC's poll watchers won't have their activities restricted by the courts.
Republicans had already been planning to ramp up their poll watching efforts as a result, recruiting up to 50,000 poll watchers nationwide, and RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that the expiration meant the "playing field is level again" between Democrats and Republicans.
Chief Critic
The consent decree expiring has raised fears among Democrats and voting rights experts that Republicans will once again employ alleged intimidation measures. "With Trump having taken over the RNC for the 2020 elections and with this consent decree no longer standing in his way, we should be concerned about a new wave of voter suppression coming from the Republican Party during the upcoming election," elections law expert Rick Hasen wrote in a 2019 piece for Slate. Marc Elias, the Democratic Party's lead voting rights attorney, told 60 Minutes in September he was "very worried" about the presidential election taking place without the consent decree in place. "It's something that I think everyone who cares about voting rights needs to worry about," he warned.
Key Background
Trump's debate comments urging supporters to watch the polls were the latest in a string of similar comments the president has made, starting in 2016 when Trump made comments like encouraging supporters to "get everybody to go out and watch." "And when I say 'watch,' you know what I'm talking about. Right?" Trump said at an Ohio rally in August 2016, when the Republican Party still had to follow the consent decree. (As a separate political candidate, the Trump campaign was not bound by the RNC's decree in 2016, though in 2018 the Trump campaign and RNC restructured and combined their efforts into a single entity.) More recently, Trump has floated the idea of sending law enforcement to the polls—much like the Republican tactics that got the consent decree implemented in the first place—which has been widely decried by both Democrats and law enforcement leaders. The RNC told the Post that no law enforcement officials will be involved in the party's poll-watching efforts, which they say will consist of only "appropriate and legal measures."
Tangent
In his comments about poll watching Tuesday night, Trump specifically called out an instance in Philadelphia, in which he alleged that poll watchers were "thrown out" and "not allowed to watch." The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that Trump supporters were barred from satellite elections offices Tuesday where voters can submit mail-in ballots, which are not official polling places and thus do not have any rights for poll watchers. The Trump campaign and RNC also have not yet had any poll watchers certified yet to watch the polls in Philadelphia, election officials told the Inquirer , after the state's Supreme Court upheld a law stipulating poll watchers in Pennsylvania can only work in the county in which they're registered to vote.
Further Reading
The Debate Over Poll Watchers in the 2020 Election (CBS News)
There's nothing stopping the RNC from using voter intimidation tactics in November now that a decades-old agreement has ended, experts warn (Business Insider)
Donald Trump Was Just Handed a Chance to Supercharge Voter Suppression in 2020 (Slate)
Trump campaign's poll-watching plans spark fears of voter suppression (CNN)
'Bad things happen in Philadelphia,' Trump says at debate, renewing false claim about poll watchers (Philadelphia Inquirer)
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I plan to do my early voting some time next work after work. Can't wait to see what will be happening at the City Library in this redder than red town
I voted absentee ballot already. I'm participating in a state ballot tracking program. straight D ticket, buh-bye cory gardner and fascist senate majority. my favorite vote was to shit can another thumper attempt to legislate women's health choices by making criminals of a woman and her doctor. voter intimidation by teabags makes me miss my chevy yukon and it's ability to scatter domestic terrorists gathered in the open down the street from my polling place.
I’m proud to live in a redder than red city!
= trumpsterville, a tea party and thumper shit hole
goody for you
stay there
My town's a lot nicer now that I've moved in....lol
I'm in texas temporarily, so I won't need to worry about any strays or the backgrounds when the shooting starts. /s
I've already put my ballot in the drop box and checked online to see that it has been received by the clerk.
My wife and I are early voting on Monday, the first day for in person early voting in California. Bye bye Donald!
many republicans have told me that they're waiting for that asteroid to fly by on 11/2 before they go vote in person, because they don't want to waste the gas, just in case.
That's because they believe in all of the branches of science, especially astrophysics...
Pinellas Sheriff investigates report of armed voter intimidation at St. Pete voting location
The first of the village idiots show up. Trump campaign denies that they were sent by them. Sheriff Dept agrees.
Just you're random idiots listening to the far right BS.
We turned in our mail in ballots to the County Clerk's office the day after we received them.
The issue/problem with that is that they won't start counting mail in ballots until the polls are closed
and they already have millions received but won't disclose exactly how many or if it's even possible to count them all on election day.
The down side is that they are required to process them all on election day if the signatures are verified by the early voter signature verifiers in each of TX 254 counties.
If it doesn't work out fine for both of us, we will be voting in person for the rest of our lives.
In Florida when you vote by mail you can go onto the local supervisor of election website and follow your ballot. Ours showed 3 days later they were received and two days after that they were counted.
Awesome!
I have a daughter in Boca raton.
may have to move there some year, lol.
You'd be moving into the 21st Century..LOLOLOL
Very cool, which proves Florida CAN do somethings corrrrectly
So I found an article from 2018 that says TX mail in ballots are treated like early walk in votes and starting on the first day of early walk in voting
they start verifying signatures and they then scan the ballots, which tallies them to a separate controller for each county.
those results are added to the early walk in voters and the 11/03 voters after the polls close in TX.
But so far we have no way of knowing whether our vote was counted.
I live in Marion county and the process is outstanding.
Let me make a special appeal for Democrats to get out the vote in swing states like Georgia, Ohio and Texas! Pennsylvania and Florida are not the only states that could send Trump into deserved exile...
Apparently TX tracks FPCA ballots for military & overseas only.
I'm still learning and searching.