Donald Trump is escalating his dangerous rhetoric about this election being "rigged," and how "they're letting people pour into the country so they can go and vote." He's been urging his supporters to go to the polls on election day to fight "voter fraud." The dangers in that are clear.
“There’s actually a risk that, in a more disorganized way, people are going to be showing up to the polls, they won’t know the law, and they’ll be engaging in discriminatory challenges,” Adam Gatlin, counsel for the Democracy Program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, told ProPublica earlier this month. “That can create the potential for a lot of disruption, longer lines because each voter takes longer to vote, and potentially discouraging and intimidating voters from coming to the polls.”
Which of course is the intent! It's made even more problematic this presidential election year because the federal government won't have as many election protection workers on hand. Thanks to the Supreme Court ruling in 2013 that severely curbed the Voting Rights Act, the Department of Justice has a much more limited role, and won't be sending out the hundreds of poll observers and monitors across the country, as it had done for the past 50 years.
“In the past, we have . . . relied heavily on election observers, specially trained individuals who are authorized to enter polling locations and monitor the process to ensure that it lives up to its legal obligations,” Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch told a Latino civil rights group over the summer. “Our ability to deploy them has been severely curtailed.”
In recent months, the Justice Department and civil rights groups have successfully sued to block a number of states, such as North Carolina, that have put in place new voter restrictions that critics say target minority voters. But advocates are worried that these courtroom victories might not be enough to protect voters if the federal government is not able to enforce the law on Election Day.
This makes election protection efforts by voting rights advocacy groups—and volunteers—all the more critical, particularly with Trump out there telling his goons to go mess with black and brown voters. That's why Daily Kos has teamed up with Protect the Vote to make sure there are trained volunteers in polls around the country.
Sign up as an Election Protection volunteer here and you'll be contacted with all the information you need to help on Election Day. If you are a lawyer, law student, or paralegal, you can also find a link on that page to sign up with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law to provide your legal expertise to Election Day efforts.