Groups watch for voter intimidation
ACLU, Common Cause recruit volunteers to help make sure eligible participants aren’t turned away
Amid increased concern over potential voter intimidation from far-right groups, New Mexico’s American Civil Liberties Union and Common Cause are teaming up to put volunteers at polling locations and staff a hotline to assist voters with ballots.
Organizers say the moves are meant to ensure no one who is legally allowed to vote is stopped from doing so.
The two groups so far have about 200 volunteers, said Mario Jimenez, a spokesman for Common Cause New Mexico. They’re aiming to have more than 300 at polling places to try and ensure the state’s election law is followed and to staff a hotline with attorneys who can answer voters’ questions.
The effort comes after a late-May announcement from the Republican Party of New Mexico that the state is among a handful targeted by the GOP to send out a team of poll watchers in an effort to ensure that election law is followed.
But some in New Mexico are alarmed after President Donald Trump’s first debate with Democratic nominee Joe Biden in which Trump repeated unfounded claims that the country’s election system can’t be trusted and told a far-right group called the Proud Boys to “stand back, stand by” during a time of nationwide social unrest.
The worry is that local right-wing militias could take it “upon themselves to intimidate voters to try to disrupt some sort of imagined voter fraud scheme,” said Micah McCoy, a spokesman for the ACLU of New Mexico. “We just don’t know what that might look like. But it seems like the president is encouraging those types of groups, and it’s certainly concerning.”
Republicans have faced criticism from Democrats and others who argue calls to send in poll watchers — a legal practice often welcomed by county clerks and being pushed as well by Common Cause and ACLU — could instead morph into a thinly-veiled effort to intimidate voters.
Steve Pearce, chairman of the state Republican Party, said in May the so-called Election Day
Operation Army for Trump is in part aimed at ensuring voter fraud does not occur and that people who are ineligible do not cast a ballot.
Pearce has said he does not trust Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver and Attorney General Hector Balderas to fairly administer the election and to prosecute voter fraud if it happens. Trump, meanwhile, has for months suggested without evidence that voting by mail, which is expected to surge to unprecedented levels in November amid the coronavirus, will lead to increased voter fraud.
Local county clerks and election workers are also expecting record turnout and have to deal with the added safety precautions of hosting in-person voting during the pandemic.
“This year presents unprecedented challenges for voters who want to exercise their right to vote and protect their health at the same time,” Heather Ferguson, executive director of Common Cause New Mexico, said in a statement. “New Mexicans should feel secure
that they can cast their ballot in a number of different ways, and that it will be counted as cast and anyone who interferes or tampers with elections will be held accountable.”
Problems have occurred
in prior years. In Doña Ana County, some local elections workers had asked voters for a state ID or driver’s license to be able to cast their ballot, Jimenez said. New Mexico law does not require an ID to vote.
“Due to the highly charged atmosphere and a coordinated campaign to undermine the democratic process and cast doubt on the integrity of our
elections, it is essential that we have trained, non-partisan observers on hand throughout the election process here in our state,” Nia Rucker, policy counsel for ACLU of New Mexico, said in a statement. “The ACLU has long fought for the voting rights of all Americans, and we are excited to join in this effort to safeguard the democratic process at this critical moment.”