Trump Wants To Send Law Enforcement To Monitor Polling Places For Fraud

Here’s the latest in Trump’s plans to claim voter fraud is undermining the upcoming election

Donald Trump has been ramping up for months to attempt to claim that voter fraud will have a major impact on the upcoming presidential election. He’s been focusing many of his attacks on mail-in voting, which is one of the safest ways many of us can vote amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. But in a new interview on Fox News, he pivoted to attack in-person voting, claiming he would enlist “law enforcement” to guard the polls and prevent fraud.

“We’re going to have sheriffs, and we’re going to have law enforcement, and we’re going to have, hopefully, US attorneys, and we’re going to have everybody and attorney generals (sic),” Trump told Sean Hannity.

There is no evidence that mail-in or in-person voting will result in voter fraud that will undermine the upcoming election, like Trump continues to claim. And according to Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California at Irvine, Trump actually has no authority to order local law enforcement, like sheriffs, to monitor the polls on election day. Doing so would likely trigger legal action, as it could easily be interpreted as an attempt to suppress voters, Hasen told CNN.

Trump is already under fire for what he called “Operation Diligent Valor,” when he deployed federal law enforcement agents into major cities where racial unrest caused ongoing protests earlier this year. The administration is actually facing a lawsuit from Portland, where protestors and activist groups say those federal agents used unnecessary force to escalate violence and made unlawful arrests of peaceful protestors.

Trump also came under fire earlier this year when he ordered federal law enforcement agents to use tear gas to clear protesters from the street in front of the White House, so he could walk across it to pose for photos at a nearby church.

In other words, Trump has a terrible track record of using federal law enforcement to deploy violence against Americans, and having these or other officers at the polls should terrify anyone who has any interest in this election being free and fair. The president’s claims that fraud will majorly affect this election have no basis in truth or reality. No matter what underhanded tactics he continues to try to deploy to keep people from the polls, anyone who is able to has to vote in November.