Millions of Americans will cast their ballots on Tuesday under intense scrutiny both from vigilantes who fear the election will be rigged and from thousands of voting rights advocates who fear the tally will be distorted by intimidation and, perhaps, the suppression of a minority vote that may be crucial to the outcome.
On one side are groups like the Oath Keepers, one of dozens of right-wing and militia groups responding to Donald J. Trump’s warnings about a stolen election. The organization has issued a nationwide “call to action” to its members, urging them to go “incognito” to polling stations on Election Day to “hunt down” instances of fraud.
On the other side are more than 100 civic and legal groups, claiming at least 10,000 volunteers, and perhaps many more. They plan to deploy at polling places nationwide to watch for signs of voter intimidation and other roadblocks to voting. Election officials and observers say they are hoping for an orderly final day of voting, but they are girding for the possibility of fights, intimidation and, perhaps, worse.
Adding to the anxiety is fear of Election Day hacking, perhaps by foreign interests.
“I would say this is the most frightening election period I can remember in my adult life,” said Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert and professor at the University of California, Irvine.
Continue reading the main storyFor months, Mr. Trump has been warning of widespread voter fraud, stoking suspicion and unrest among his supporters. While he has presented no evidence for these claims — and experts say election fraud is exceedingly rare — his warnings have resonated among his followers. Fifty-six percent of likely voters for Mr. Trump have little or no confidence in the election’s fairness, according to a recent poll from the Pew Research Center.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly urged his supporters to monitor polling stations, and the campaign’s website includes a sign-up form for “election observers” to “Help Me Stop Crooked Hillary From Rigging This Election!” An unofficial campaign adviser, the Republican political operative Roger J. Stone, has ties to a private organization, Stop the Steal, which has promised to aggressively monitor polling places for signs of fraud.
Some early voters in a number of states have reported isolated episodes of intimidation, and civil rights groups say that cases of harassment, while still low, have been more common than in any election in recent memory. But the Trump campaign has distanced itself from them, and it was impossible to predict whether exhortations by Mr. Trump and others would spur further action.
“In the past, we’ve been worried about things that haven’t panned out,” said Allison Riggs, a senior staff attorney with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in Durham, N.C. The coalition and a second group, Democracy North Carolina, said they will send a thousand volunteers to the state’s polling places on Tuesday.
“We’re preparing for the worst,” she said, “but I’m not necessarily expecting it.”
Both the First Amendment and the ambiguity of election laws give protesters and groups like Mr. Stone’s considerable latitude. While local laws may require outsiders to remain a certain distance from polling sites or prohibit them from approaching voters in lines, federal law merely prohibits them from interfering with an individual’s right to vote, without defining what interference is.
Voting rights advocates say they are especially concerned about attempts to keep African-Americans and Latinos from voting. Tuesday is the first presidential election in five decades that is not being conducted under a crucial Voting Rights Act provision that mandated federal oversight of election procedures in places with a history of bias. The Justice Department has said it will deploy more than 500 observers to monitor polling in 28 states, a third fewer than in the 2012 election.
A coalition of more than 100 civil and voting rights groups operating under the Election Protection Coalition banner will send at least 10,000 volunteers to polling places in 29 states, said Kristen Clarke, the president of the coalition’s lead organization, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The coalition also operates a hotline, 1-866-OUR-VOTE, that fields complaints and assists voters.
The advocacy group Common Cause, which is contributing 4,000 volunteers to the coalition, will post more volunteers in central Pennsylvania based on recent concerns about intimidation of the growing number of Latino voters there, said Allegra Chapman, the group’s director of voting and elections.
Civil rights groups are also concerned about self-appointed election monitors carrying firearms. A few states with open-carry laws, including Texas and Georgia, bar guns from polling stations. But in many states, the rules are murkier. In New Hampshire, the attorney general’s office is telling election moderators not to turn away people with guns, even if they are present in schools, where federal law generally prohibits firearms.
Brian Buonamano, the assistant attorney general, said the state had no authority to enforce the federal statute. “Folks can vote with a pistol on their hip,” he said.
There are also fears that hackers could try to disrupt the election, whether that means tinkering with voter registration rolls or an attack on a company that provides key information to voters who are trying to find their polling sites.
Some fringe groups say they have mobilized on Mr. Trump’s behalf, including white nationalist organizations that claim to be dispatching volunteers to watch polls and even set up hidden cameras at polling stations.
Mr. Stone said his group would conduct what he called “scientifically administered exit polls” in different precincts to compare with official election results. According to the group’s website, about 3,000 people had volunteered as of Monday afternoon.
“It’s my belief that if you lose the election, you cannot just say it’s rigged because you lost,” Mr. Stone said. “You have to have some admissible evidence of that.”
The goal of Oath Keepers, said its founder, Stewart Rhodes, will be to document and report any potential cases of fraud in notebooks and with video cameras. While he declined to estimate how many volunteers will participate, the group claims to have 35,000 members, some of whom have attended protests — including the January occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon — armed with semiautomatic rifles.
In districts nationwide, officials have moved to cancel classes in schools that serve as polling places, often citing safety concerns and the expectation of higher-than-usual traffic.
The prospect of voter intimidation has also prompted a flurry of lawsuits that the courts have been scrambling to deal with before Election Day. Democratic officials in six battleground states filed suits accusing Mr. Trump, Mr. Stone and state Republican parties of seeking to intimidate minority voters.
And the Democratic National Committee has accused the Republican National Committee of cooperating with Mr. Trump’s “ballot security” efforts — and, in so doing, violating a longstanding consent decree barring the Republican committee from intimidating minority voters.
Looming over the day’s events is also the question of whether Mr. Trump’s fringe supporters will accept the results of the election if he loses.
Tim Selaty Sr., whose independent grass-roots group, Citizens for Trump, is recruiting volunteers to conduct exit polls in Philadelphia, Cleveland and other cities with large minority populations, said he was convinced Mr. Trump will win. If he does not, Mr. Selaty said, he and other Trump supporters will await their cue from the candidate, who has thus far been evasive on the subject.
“We still believe in the political process,” Mr. Selaty said. “We tell our people: ‘No violence. Put your guns back away.’”
Continue reading the main story
