DEMOCRACY WATCHElection Experts See Few Legal Options for Trump to Meddle with Polling Places
President Donald Trump has so far declined to rule out sending the National Guard or federal law enforcement officers to polling locations throughout the country, and a few months ago casually and briefly mentioned canceling the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress. Any such actions would lie outside the bounds of presidential power and the law, according to experts.
President Donald Trump said earlier this year he’d “do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections” this fall, declining to rule out sending the National Guard or federal law enforcement officers to polling locations throughout the country.
Those comments came a few months after Trump casually and briefly mentioned canceling the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.
Any such actions would lie outside the bounds of presidential power and the law, according to experts interviewed by States Newsroom. Nonetheless, one Democratic U.S. senator is sending letters to numerous members of the administration asking for commitments troops won’t be sent to the polls, and state officials are readying plans to keep voting secure.
“The president can say whatever he wants, but his powers are extraordinarily limited in this way,” said Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.
With two months until voting ends on Nov. 3, the administration’s only publicly disclosed plan to monitor elections is a decades-old Justice Department program that sends federal workers throughout the country.
Michigan Deputy Secretary of State Aghogho Edevbie said there are strict rules for the people who participate, including that they can only observe if state election officials allow it or if a court orders it.
Edevbie said his state will allow DOJ monitors during this fall’s elections to observe but not to interfere.
“Their job is not to interrogate individual voters,” he said. “Now outside of the polling location, outside of the 100 feet, if they want to talk to a voter, they absolutely can. But if those interactions tip over into actions that we deem to be actions of intimidation, we will revoke our permission for them to be here.”
The Department of Justice declined an interview request from States Newsroom, writing in a statement the administration hopes “to have the largest monitoring effort in the Department’s history,” totaling around 1,000.
DOJ election observers have been dispatched to monitor primary elections throughout the year without much fanfare, though Wyoming Republican Gov. Mark Gordon said in late August that their behavior in his state was “a bit aggressive.”
“It just was irregular, and I have asked the attorney general to start looking into, you know, kind of the nature of the visits and all that sort of stuff,” Gordon said, according to reporting from WyoFile, an independent nonprofit newsroom.
