“‘Stop the Steal’ conspiracies are coming for swing state ballot boxes”

Vox:

In the lead-up to the November midterm elections, groups that have allied themselves with former President Donald Trump and Republicans have encouraged people to stake out polling sites — with the explicit goal of building a case to challenge election outcomes, introducing a new facet to the efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Early voting locations in Arizona have already been the sites of some high-profile incidents of alleged or potential voter intimidation. In one incident, two armed people in tactical gear and affiliated with the group Clean Elections USA were seen at a ballot drop box in Mesa, Arizona. After two nonprofit groups filed suit last week against Clean Elections USA, alleging voter intimidation, a federal judge ruled that the group’s tactics did not amount to a “true threat” and that activists were allowed to gather at the ballot boxes.

Arizona has been the site of several alleged instances of voter intimidation, but similar incidents are happening elsewhere — including in swing states like Pennsylvania, as Mary McCord, executive director of Georgetown University’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, told PBS News Hour’s Judy Woodruff Thursday.

Axios reported earlier this week that members of extremist groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys are being encouraged to sign up as volunteers in local election offices, putting people who wish to disrupt elections alongside the volunteer force that is a critical part of the election process. And groups like True the Vote and One More Mission  which have the financial and logistical support of some well-known Trump insiders — are mobilizing volunteers.

These activities are contributing to an environment around the upcoming election so volatile that the Department of Justice addressed it publicly at a news conference last week. Attorney General Merrick Garland there said that “the Justice Department has an obligation to guarantee a free and fair vote by everyone who’s qualified to vote and will not permit voters to be intimidated” around the midterm elections.

Whether thousands of people will be spurred to extreme actions this year based on a conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was stolen, the midterms are rigged, and Donald Trump is the rightful president of the United States is unclear, maybe even doubtful. But even the possibility of violence could have a deterrent effect on voters.

“It creates the conditions whereby, around the country, it could deter people from voting, and cause people to be nervous because they don’t know what could happen in their own areas, so I think the effects are much wider than what’s happening in a particular county in Arizona,” Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and the director of its Safeguarding Democracy Project, told Vox.

“It harkens back to a time when some voters, such as African-American voters in the South, faced threats and intimidation when they tried to go and cast a ballot.”

Share this: