Donald Trump Is Encouraging Intimidation and Racial Profiling at the Polls

[Rob L 3,811]

 In 1981, during a New Jersey gubernatorial election, the Republican National Committee launched a “Ballot Security Task Force” that sent sample ballots to voters in predominantly African-American and Hispanic precincts. When 45,000 letters were returned as undeliverable, the RNC tried to remove the voters from the rolls and hired off-duty cops to patrol polling sites in black and Hispanic neighborhoods of Newark and Trenton. Police carried firearms at polling places and wore armbands reading “National Ballot Security Task Force,” while the RNC posted large signs saying, this area is being patrolled by the national ballot security task force. it is a crime to falsify a ballot or to violate election laws.

After the election, the DNC won a court settlement ordering the RNC to “refrain from undertaking any ballot security activities.” Now Donald Trump may be violating the consent decree against the GOP by asking his supporters to become a “Trump Election Observer” to “Stop Crooked Hillary From Rigging This Election.”

Trump unveiled the page on his website the same day he campaigned in Pennsylvania, where he claimed “the only way we can lose, in my opinion—and I really mean this, Pennsylvania—is if cheating goes on…. And we have to call up law enforcement. And we have to have the sheriffs and the police chiefs and everybody watching…The only way they can beat it in my opinion—and I mean this 100 percent—if in certain sections of the state they cheat, OK? So I hope you people can sort of not just vote on the 8th, go around and look and watch other polling places and make sure that it’s 100 percent fine, because without voter identification—which is shocking, shocking that you don’t have it.”

Let’s leave aside the fact there’s no widespread voter fraud in Pennsylvania or elsewhere and that Trump is losing Pennsylvania by nine points in the Real Clear Politics average. His election observer program mirrors the type of voter intimidation the courts have blocked the RNC from doing. And his call for law enforcement officers to monitor the polls expressly violatesPennsylvania law. “No police officer in commission, whether in uniform or in citizen’s clothes, shall be within one hundred feet of a polling place during the conduct of any primary or election, unless in the exercise of his privilege of voting, or for the purpose of serving warrants, or unless called upon to preserve the peace,” according to Pennsylvania Title 25, Section 3047. “In no event may any police officer unlawfully use or practice any intimidation, threats, force or violence nor, in any manner, unduly influence or overawe any elector or prevent him from voting or restrain his freedom of choice.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/donald-trump-is-encouraging-intimidation-and-racial-profiling-at-the-polls/

[John Miller 761]

Can't win on the merits so must resort to voter suppression and voter intimidation. Trump will try to rig the election. It's the only chance he has.

[unsmiley 111]

Rob L, on 15 Aug 2016 - 2:11 PM, said:

... the fact there’s no widespread voter fraud in Pennsylvania or elsewhere ...

Yeah, right. That's why Philadelphia had 59 precincts that voted 100% for Obama in 2012. I'm sure that was on the up-and-up. Not a single vote for Romney!

[unsmiley 111]

Rob L, on 15 Aug 2016 - 2:11 PM, said:

 And his call for law enforcement officers to monitor the polls expressly violatesPennsylvania law. “No police officer in commission, whether in uniform or in citizen’s clothes, shall be within one hundred feet of a polling place during the conduct of any primary or election, unless in the exercise of his privilege of voting, or for the purpose of serving warrants, or unless called upon to preserve the peace,” according to Pennsylvania Title 25, Section 3047.

...In 2012, two members of the radical New Black Panther Party used nightsticks and racial epithets in an effort to scare white voters away from a Philadelphia polling place. The Obama administration ended up dropping almost all of the charges in the case against the Panthers...

So it's OK for racist thugs to "monitor", but not the police?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2016/08/15/voter-fraud_warning_trump039s_right_amp_media_is_wrong_389245.html

[John Miller 761]

Yeah, right. That's why Philadelphia had 59 precincts that voted 100% for Obama in 2012. I'm sure that was on the up-and-up. Not a single vote for Romney!

Raised, looked at, explained. Odd? Yes. Voter fraud? Not even a hint of any evidence to support it.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/2012fraud.asp

In 59 voting districts in the Philadelphia region, Obama received 100% of the votes with not even a single vote recorded for Romney. (A mathematical and statistical impossibility).

The language used here is a giveaway right at the start that someone was making judgments about something he didn't fully understand: It's not a "mathematical impossibility" for a vote count to add up to zero, and there is no such thing as a "statistical impossibility." (Statistics may indicate that the odds of a particular event's occurring are very, very low, but statistics can't prove something to be "impossible.")

It is true that 59 voting divisions in Philadelphia recorded no votes for Mitt Romney, but given the voter composition of the Philadelphia area (and some Philadelphia wards in particular), and the number of voters in each division, that outcome was hardly a "mathematical and statistical impossibility."

Barack Obama won the overall vote in the Philadelphia area by an 85% to 14% margin over Mitt Romney; Obama also received greater than 90% of the vote in more than half of Philadelphia's 66 wards, and 99% or more of the vote in seven of those wards. That result was hardly surprising given that, as the Philadelphia Inquirer noted, those wards are "clustered in almost exclusively black sections of West and North Philadelphia" and "nationally, 93 percent of African Americans voted for Obama." The Philadelphia wards that trended very heavily for Barack Obama included many divisions of between 200 and500 voters in which Mitt Romney received a scant handful of votes (and sometimes no votes at all), a result mirroring that of the previous election, in which Republican candidate John McCain "got zero votes in 57 Philadelphia voting divisions."

When the Inquirer went looking for Republican voters in some of those divisions, they couldn't find any:

Many parts of Philadelphia and other big cities simply lack Republican voters, a fact of campaigning that has been true since Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, Jonathan Rodden, a political science professor at Stanford University, said.

Although voter registration lists, which often contain outdated information, show 12 Republicans live in the [28th] ward's third division,

The Inquirer

was unable to find any of them by calling or visiting their homes.

Four of the registered Republicans no longer lived there; four others didn't answer their doors. City Board of Elections registration data say a registered Republican used to live at 25th and York Streets, but none of the neighbors across the street knew him.

James Norris, 19, who lives down the street, is listed as a Republican in city data. But he said he's a Democrat and voted for Obama because he thinks the president will help the middle class.

A few blocks away, Eric Sapp, a 42-year-old chef, looked skeptical when told that city data had him listed as a registered Republican. "I got to check on that," said Sapp, who voted for Obama.

Eighteen Republicans reportedly live in the nearby 15th Division, according to city registration records. The 15th has the distinction of pitching two straight Republican shutouts — zero votes for McCain in 2008, zero for Romney. Oh, and 13 other city divisions did the same thing in 2008 and 2012.

Three of the 15th's registered Republicans were listed as living in the same apartment, but the tenant there said he had never heard of them. The addresses of several others could not be found.

On West Albert Street, Duke Dunston says he knows he's a registered Republican, but he's never voted for one.

Thus the results in Philadelphia were reflective not of an "impossible" statistical anomaly but rather of a general historical trend widely seen throughout the city.

[Boiler 45,670]

So how many precincts voted straight GOP?

[Rob L 3,811]

...In 2012, two members of the radical New Black Panther Party used nightsticks and racial epithets in an effort to scare white voters away from a Philadelphia polling place. The Obama administration ended up dropping almost all of the charges in the case against the Panthers...

So it's OK for racist thugs to "monitor", but not the police?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2016/08/15/voter-fraud_warning_trump039s_right_amp_media_is_wrong_389245.html

is monitor code? i didnt have time to read the article Edited August 16, 2016 by Rob L