Supreme Court Allows Trump’s Volunteer Poll Watchers To Monitor Voting
"Make sure everything is on the up and up."
Poll watchers supporting Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in hopes of averting or reporting a “rigged” election received the Supreme Court’s permission Monday to staff polling places across the battleground state of Ohio.
“Make sure everything is on the up and up,” Trump has told his supporters in urging them to be alert to voter fraud. “So go to your place and vote. And go pick some other place and go sit there with your friends and make sure it’s on the up and up. Because you know what, that’s a big, big problem in this country and nobody wants to talk about it.”
In response, grassroots groups in many states have responded to Trump’s call.
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On Friday, a federal judge had agreed with objections from Ohio Democrats that “the Trump campaign has sought to encourage supporters monitor polling places on Election Day and to act in ways that might intimidate voters,” the Washington Times reported.
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Republicans appealed, and on Sunday, a three-judge panel from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the lower-court ruling. That led to Monday’s action by the Supreme Court to deny the Ohio Democratic Party’s request to bar Trump’s supporters.
Similar lawsuits have been rejected in Arizona, Nevada and New Jersey. In North Carolina, U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles said she found no evidence of intimidation but she might act if there appeared to be an effort to interfere with minority voters.
Writing on Allen B. West, Associate Editor Michelle Jesse said she knows that despite arguments from the left, voter fraud exists.
“I have heard stories from trusted family and friends who have been officially on duty as poll watchers who have seen busloads of people being brought in to vote and being ‘vouched for’ en masse. This is just one example of things that may not appear on the ‘up and up,'” she wrote.
“No one — certainly not Trump and his campaign — are suggesting intimidation of voters of any kind. How does simply observing — keeping one’s eyes open and alert to irregular activity — ‘intimidate’ or ‘suppress’ voters? Unless they mean, perhaps, it suppresses illegal voters — who indeed might be hindered by observers watching for improper activity,” she added.
In addition to Trump’s call for vigilance, this election season has seen Project Veritas Action release a video documenting efforts to commit voter fraud on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
“ … we’ve been busing people in to deal with you f—ing a——s for 50 years and we’re not going to stop now, we’re just going to find a different way to do it,” Scott Foval, then national field director of Americans United for Change, says in the video.
Foval, who resigned after the Project Veritas Action videos were made public, noted that even being caught does not necessarily mean the game is up.
“The question is whether when you get caught by a reporter, does that matter? Because does it turn into an investigation or not? In this case, this state, the answer is no, because they don’t have any power to do anything,” he said.
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