Trump’s watchers on alert for ‘ bad things’
Army of volunteers following presidential message with an ominous edge at polling places
The group of Trump campaign officials came carrying cellphone cameras and a determination to help the US President’s re- election efforts in Philadelphia. But they were asked to leave the city’s newly opened satellite election offices after being told local election laws did not permit them to monitor voters coming to request and complete absentee ballots.
On social media, right- wing news sites and in the presidential debate on Wednesday, President Donald Trump and his campaign quickly suggested nefarious intent in the actions of local election officials, with Trump saying during the debate that “bad things happen in Philadelphia” and urging his supporters everywhere to “go into the polls and watch very carefully.”
The dark and baseless descriptions of the state’s voting process were the latest broad- brush attempt by the Trump campaign to undermine confidence in this year’s election, a message delivered with an ominous edge at the debate when he advised an extremist group, the Proud Boys, to “stand back and stand by” in his remarks about the election.
The sinister insinuations and calls for his followers to monitor voting activity are clear. What’s less so is how his campaign wants this to play out.
Trump and his campaign often seem to be working on two tracks, one seemingly an amped- up version of mostly familiar election procedures like poll watching, the other something of a Pandora’s box with few guard rails.
In the first, campaign lawyer Justin Clark told a conservative group this year of plans to “leverage about 50,000 volunteers all the way through, from early vote through Election Day, to be able to watch the polls.” The head of the party in Philadelphia said this week that there would be multiple poll watchers at every site in the city, which would mean at least 1600 Republican watchers in Philadelphia alone.
Thea McDonald, a campaign spokeswoman, said the operation was needed because “Democrats have proven their lack of trustworthiness time and again this election cycle.” She said Trump’s volunteer watchers “will be trained to ensure all rules are applied equally, all valid ballots are counted, and all Democrat rule- breaking is called out”.
In recent weeks, the campaign has distributed training videos to prospective poll watchers describing what they can and can’t do while monitoring the voting process, imploring them to be courteous to “even our Democrat friends.” The watchers will challenge ballots and the eligibility of voters, but are not supposed to interact with voters themselves.
Voting rights groups fear the effort could veer toward voter intimidation. But the question is how far Trump’s supporters will take the exhortations to protect a vote the President has relentlessly, and baselessly, described as being at risk of widespread fraud.
The Republican National Committee has been allowed to participate in poll watching only because the courts in 2018 lifted a consent decree that had barred them from doing so for 3 ½ decades, after an operation to intimidate New Jersey voters in 1981.
Now, poll watchers are being instructed in specific detail.
But while the official poll watchers are being schooled in legal procedures, Trump and some of his closest surrogates, including his longtime confidant Roger Stone and his son Donald Trump Jnr, have recently floated conspiracy theories that also sound like calls to arms.
During a recent appearance on The Alex Jones Show, a far- right radio programme that peddles conspiracy theories, Stone said ballots in Nevada should be seized by federal marshals, saying “they are already corrupted” and Trump should consider nationali sing state police. Stone, a felon whose sentence Trump commuted this year, has ties to the Proud Boys.
Many have been aghast at the President’s tactics. Nevada’s attorney general, Aaron Ford, a Democrat, tweeted on Wednesday that telling supporters to “go into the polls and watch very carefully” amounted to intimidation. “FYI — voter intimidation is illegal in Nevada,” he wrote.
“Believe me when I say it: You do it, and you will be prosecuted.”
Lauren Groh- Wargo, the chief executive of Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group, said Trump and Republicans “continue to engage in these voter suppression efforts because they know if we have a free and fair election they will lose.”
And Benjamin L. Ginsberg, a retired elections lawyer for Republicans, said Trump’s debate comments went “several degrees farther than his campaign and the RNC have gone in describing their Election Day operations plans,” adding that the remarks placed “his campaign’s and the RNC’s lawyers in the position of having to answer how they plan to instruct their massive 50,000- person army of poll watchers to act on Election Day.”
While Trump and his allies give licence to election discord, official party poll watchers are required to view training videos that provide a legalistic look at their role, which state election laws tightly limit.
Both parties solicit volunteer poll watchers, a process Republicans previously led at the state level amid the consent decree. In a new video tailored for Pennsylvania, prospective poll watchers are told they must wear identification and remain outside an enclosed space designated for voting. Questions must be directed to a party hotline or elections staff, not voters.
But such legal niceties are already falling away as early voting begins. Trump and members of his family t weeted allegations against Philadelphia, and right- wing news outlets amplified the message of watchers being “barred” from early voting.
“As you know today, there was a big problem,” Trump said during Wednesday’s debate. “In Philadelphia, they went in to watch, they were called poll watchers, a very safe, very nice thing. They were thrown out, they weren’t allowed to watch. You know why? Because bad things happen in Philadelphia, bad things.”
But city officials said they were enforcing the law and would continue to do so. “We have law enforcement officers, we have protocols in place to make sure all the voters are safe,” said Omar Sabir, a Democratic city commissioner in Philadelphia. “Don’t let anything or anyone intimidate you from exercising your right to vote.”
The activity in Philadelphia came 10 days after Trump supporters chanting “four more years” disrupted early voting in Fairfax, Virginia, at one point forming a line that voters had to walk around outside the site.