Reports of people watching ballot boxes in Arizona, sometimes armed or wearing ballistic vests, raise serious concerns about voter intimidation, the Justice Department said Monday as it stepped into a lawsuit over the monitoring.
The statement from the Justice Department comes days after a federal judge refused to bar a group from monitoring the outdoor drop boxes in the suburbs of Phoenix.
Threats, intimidation and coercion are illegal under the federal Voting Rights Act, even if they doesn’t succeed, the government’s attorneys wrote. While lawful poll watching can support transparency, “ballot security forces” present a significant risk of voter intimidation, the court documents state.
“While the First Amendment protects expressive conduct and peaceable assembly generally, it affords no protection for threats of harm directed at voters,” U.S. government attorneys wrote.
The filing runs counter to a judge’s order Friday. U.S. District Court Judge Michael Liburdi found the allegations present “serious questions” but it wasn’t clear they were a ”true threat” to specific people or groups and barring them could violate the watchers’ freedom of speech.
Liburdi is a Trump appointee and a member of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization. The Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans is appealing the order in the swing state with several closely contested races this year.
The group sued a group calling itself Clean Elections USA after reports that people were watching 24-hour ballot boxes in Maricopa County, including some who were masked and armed. A separate suit was filed in rural Yavapai County, where the League of Women Voters alleges voters have been intimidated by three groups, including one associated with the far-right anti-government group Oath Keepers.
The two cases were merged and the Justice Department filed a statement of interest Monday. Attorneys for Clean Elections USA did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Complaints that people were watching the boxes, taking photos and videos, and following voters alarmed local and federal law enforcement. Sheriff’s deputies began providing security around two outdoor drop boxes in Maricopa County after a pair of people carrying guns and wearing bulletproof vests showed up at a box in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa. Another 24-hour outdoor drop box in downtown Phoenix is now surrounded by a chain link fence.
The law doesn’t specifically list which activities are prohibited near polling places, but video recording and photographing voters has been recognized as a concerns for decades and was named in a 1994 Justice Department letter on potential violations of the Voting Rights Act, federal attorneys wrote.
As of last week, Arizona’s secretary of state said her office has referred six cases of potential voter intimidation to the state attorney general and the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as a threatening email sent to the state elections director. Arizona law states electioneers and monitors must remain 75 feet (23 meters) from a voting location.
Groups around the United States have embraced a film that has been discredited called “2000 Mules” that claimed people were paid to travel among drop boxes and stuff them with fraudulent ballots during the 2020 presidential vote.
There’s no evidence for the notion that a network of Democrat-associated ballot “mules” has conspired to collect and deliver ballots to drop boxes, either in the 2020 presidential vote or in the upcoming midterm elections.
(AP)
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3 Responses
“There’s no evidence for the notion that a network of Democrat-associated ballot “mules” has conspired to collect and deliver ballots to drop boxes, either in the 2020 presidential vote or in the upcoming midterm elections.”
Why? Is it because liberal-democrat controlled AP wants to convince us that this is so? It actually is quite likely that not only was there rampant fraud in the ‘2020 election, but that Trump actually won that election and should be sitting in the White House currently.
The judge is correct, and the DOJ spokesman is violating his oath to uphold the constitution. Watching a ballot box is not a “threat of harm”. The first amendment protects anyone’s right to watch, and the second amendment protects their right to be armed while doing so. And that’s all there is to it.
In any case, this DOJ, which is a direct successor of 0bama’s DOJ that dropped the charges against the New Back Panthers after they’d already been convicted, has a real chutzpah complaining about intimidating voters.
In 2008 there were incidents of some pro-Democratic, armed, African American militants “patrolling” polling places in African American neighborhoods, and the Justice Department chose not to prosecute. If they take action now, especially if these are people who are authorized poll watchers (each party can appoint some), and there is no local law banning firearms at the polling place (which would be lawful, even under the most expansive reading of the 2nd amendment), they Justice Department will have problems defending their actions.
They could require ballots to be sent by registered mail (at government expense), meaning you would not only get proof of delivery since registered mail is tracked, but would have to show ID at the Post Office. But that is too simple a solution, and would make it too hard to stuff the ballot boxes.