State’s senators warn of voter intimidation

NEW HAVEN — Russian interference in next week’s presidential election is worse than four years ago, but there are enough safeguards in place to assure that all votes will be counted, no matter how long it takes, Connecticut’s U.S. senators said Tuesday.

Joining Mayor Justin Elicker and Secretary of the State Denise Merrill on the steps of City Hall, U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy warned that any bystander agitation at polling places, egged on by sites such as ArmyforTrump.com , can and should be prosecuted under federal law.

“I hope I’m wrong, but all signs point to a massive onslaught on the integrity of our election system in the next week,” Blumenthal said in a mid-afternoon news conference. “All signs point to a massive, calculated, concerted effort to spread misinformation and disinformation to suppress the vote and disrupt the election. The Russians are at it through groups like Peace Data and other groups that are hiring writers. They are spreading misinformation as we speak.”

Blumenthal, Murphy and Merrill have all participated in classified meetings, the contents of which they cannot divulge. But Blumenthal said the details are “chilling” in their detail. “What the Russians are doing this year makes 2016 look like child’s play, quaint, antiquated. The tactics that they have used in Europe — hacking into registration systems and hiring local and bringing to bear foreign operatives — there is no reason to think they’re not doing it here.”

Blumenthal said he was deeply disturbed by a tweet from the president that attacked the mail-in ballot process, with an order to have a final national vote total on Election Night. “That is just false and reprehensible,” he said. “It is part of a calculated plan to stop counting the vote, suppress the vote and rig the vote, and that is the reason why Twitter said about it that it was likely to mislead and in effect label it deceptive.”

He warned that efforts at websites that support Trump to gather people at polling sites, borders on “vigilantism” and voter intimidation. “It is real. It is now. It is ongoing.”

Blumenthal said he will tough questions of the nation’s social media executives from Twitter, Alphabet-Google and Facebook during a Senate Commerce Committee meeting on Wednesday.

“Trump has a plan, Trump and the Republican Party have a plan, and the Russians are executing on their plan right now, but social media needs to have a plan, too,” Blumenthal said. “They have a responsibility and I am going to demand that they tell the American people tomorrow what their plan is.”

“You show up to a polling place with an intent to harass voters or stop people from voting, you’re going to be held accountable,” Murphy said. “You’re going to find yourself arrested by local authorities, and you might find yourself subject to federal charges as well, so no matter what the president may say, no matter what website you may be reading, don’t show up to the polls if your intent is to harass or intimidate voters.”

Murphy, referring to a new report from Senate Democrats detailing election scenarios in competitive states around the nation, said that whether or not a presidential winner is declared on Election Day, all the votes must be counted in this most-unusual of election years.

Murphy and Blumenthal discounted President Donald Trump’s desire to have all votes counted on election night.

“For instance, in the state of Pennsylvania, they are not going to count their absentee votes until the polls close and so, you are not going to have the full result from Pennsylvania at 9 o’clock or 10 o’clock at night on Tuesday,” Murphy said. “And if that happens to be the state that decides the presidency then we’re going to have to wait until we count enough votes to be sure.”

Elicker said that 15,000 absentee ballots have been sent to city voters, and 7,500 ballots have been sent back by voters. Ballots have to be filed by 8 p.m. on Tuesday. “Most importantly we have voters that overwhelmingly engaged in the process, interested in the process and have a heightened awareness of information that might be misleading,” Elicker said.

Merrill said that Connecticut’s seven electoral votes aren’t really getting the kind of national focus like the battleground states of Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are getting.

“There are very strong state statutes and local ordinances that control behavior in polling places,” Merrill said. “I have to say we have never seen this in Connecticut. It’s sort of not done here. We’ve been a very civilized election state. And every vote has been counted, and I expect the same will be done this year.”