President Donald Trump’s continued gripe over the way the election will be handled this pandemic year has led him to a new idea. He plans to have law enforcement and U.S. attorneys at numerous polling places around the country in order to prevent his claims that the election is at risk of being rigged.
What We Know:
- Trump recently appeared on Fox News on Thursday night making his usual remarks. This latest effort is seemingly aimed to inject doubt into the public ahead of an already usual election year, where millions of Americans will vote via mail due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Poll watching is a standard practice of any election, but Democrats have noted their concern toward the lengths the GOP is headed in to increase the watching.
BREAKING: Trump tells Hannity that he will send law enforcement to the polls.
Not without a legal fight he won’t!pic.twitter.com/avRoWh5Qfo
— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) August 21, 2020
- Just before Joe Biden accepted his nomination, President Trump told host Sean Hannity during the last night of the Democratic National Convention (DNC), “We’re going to have sheriffs, and we’re going to have law enforcement and we’re going to have hopefully U.S. attorneys and we’re going to have everybody, and attorney generals.”
According to CNN, “the president does not have the authority to send law enforcement to polling locations”.
- Trump’s interview with Fox was filled with a hand full of false and disproven claims about voting. He essentially stated he had no clue where voting forms would be sent to, implying a false pretense that government officials could end up sending documents to all Democrat strongholds instead of Republican ones, with a message that these people don’t need to send these forms back until after the election.
- All of Trump’s claims are far from the truth and only reinforce the fact he is trying to chip away at the election. The NY Times reported that at least three-quarters of registered American voters will be able to receive a ballot by mail this election. This figure includes roughly 44 million potential ballots that would be sent to historically blue states, such as California and New Jersey.
Ultimately, the unprecedented number of mail-in voting this election year will surely raise questions, but studies show all forms of voter fraud are rare. Still, reports show that the GOP will recruit an estimated 50,000 more poll watchers across the country, particularly in “battleground states”.
