As reports of alleged voter intimidation sprout up ahead of next month’s midterm elections, Attorney GeneralMerrick Garlandsaid Monday that the U.S. Justice Department “has an obligation to guarantee a free and fair vote.”
In a press conference Monday, Garland was asked aboutreports of armed “vigilantes"posting up outside of polling places in Arizona and separate reports from Texas, where the Republican secretary of state recently announced he wouldsend inspectors to observe vote-counting.
Garland’s remarks come two years after former President began casting doubt on the results of the election that he lost. In the years since, he and his allies have continued to falsely claim that elections in the U.S. are rife with fraud, despite losing numerous legal battles in courts attempting to prove that thesis.
Just this weekend, two people wearing tactical gear and allegedly armed with guns werespotted near a drop boxin Mesa, Arizona — located within Maricopa County, home of a controversial audit of the 2020 election.
“There’s a group of people hanging out near the ballot dropbox filming and photographing my wife and I as we approached the dropbox and accused us of being a mule,” the complaint reads. “They took photographs of our license plate and of us and and then followed us out the parking lot in one of their cars continuing to film.”
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.Andrew Harnik/AP/Bloomberg via Getty
Meanwhile, in Texas, both the secretary of state and state attorney general’s offices have said they plan to send inspectors and “election security trainers” to monitor polling places in Houston — despite a lack of any evidence demonstrating that such monitoring is needed.
In response, officials in Harris County, where Houston is located, have requested thatfederal, rather than state, monitors be sentto ensure voter intimidation doesn’t take place.
Harris County attorney Christian Menefee likened the state’s inspectors to the audits that took place in the wake of the 2020 election — audits that turned up little to no evidence of election fraud.
“This ‘audit’ started with former President Donald Trump calling on Gov. Abbott to audit the 2020 election, and now it has led to the state sending a ‘task force’ and ‘inspectors’ to oversee our elections,” Menefee said in the statement, per Axios. “We’re going to grant them the access the law requires, but we know state leaders in Austin cannot be trusted to be an honest broker in our elections.”
In August, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite said the Justice Department has reviewed more than 1,000 threats against election officials in the last year since a task force was created to examine threats against state and local officials who run elections.
About 10% of the complaints the task force received warranted criminal investigations, Polite said,according toThe Washington Post.
“The trauma experienced in this community,” Polite told the lawmakers in aSenate Judiciary hearing, “is profound and unprecedented.”
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In emotional testimonybefore a Senate committee in 2021, election officials from around the country shared the often graphic death threats they had received in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.
VOA News national security correspondentJeff Seldin quoted officialsat the event as saying midterm elections were taking place in an “incredibly heightened threat environment.”
Seldin quoted Samantha Vinograd as saying the national security apparatus is “deeply aware of several trends, the first being that anti-government and anti-authority extremists have been extremely active.” What’s perhaps even more frightening, Vinograd added, is that officials have seen the window between talk and action “narrow.”
Check your voter registration, locate your polling place, and make a voting plan atVote.orgto ensure that your voice is heard this election season.
source: people.com
