Don’t look now, but Donald Trump’s call to arms to commit voter intimidation has begun.
Politics
On Saturday, MAGA fanatics followed through with ‘The Donald’s’ marching orders by creating chaos at the polls and instigating blatant voter intimidation.
A group of Trumpies showed up to a polling location in Fairfax, VA waving Trump flags and shouting “four more years” in an attempt to purposely cause a commotion. According to a county election official, the group even formed a line in an attempt to block voters from entering the poll location. Although those in line were eventually able to walk around the MAGA crowd, both voters and staff made it known they felt intimidated.
Virginia election law clearly states that it is illegal to “hinder or delay a qualified voter in entering or leaving a polling place,” and that it is also prohibited to perform any kind of political advocacy within 40 feet of any entrance to a polling place. However, videos posted on social media showed demonstrators brazenly gathering outside the entrance while holding up Trump campaign signs and shouting at voters as they walked past them.
“In Virginia, the safe zone around the polling location is only 40 feet, but that safe zone is for campaigning and trying to change a person’s vote,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, a voting rights group. “Outside of that, in general, there are laws against intimidation. So I would say that even if they have a right to campaign, which they absolutely do, they do not have a right to interfere with someone’s right to vote or to intimidate them.
“To me, this went beyond campaigning and they should have been removed,” she added.
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A group of Trump campaign volunteers and supporters are in front of the Fairfax County Government Center where early voting is happening now.
I spoke with a number of supporters who praised the president’s leadership, but none that I spoke to were planning to early vote. @MSNBC pic.twitter.com/Xfep718M4N
— Amanda Golden (@amandawgolden) September 19, 2020
“Citizens coming into and leaving the building did have to go by them [Trump’s MAGA followers],” said Gary Scott, the general registrar of Fairfax County. “Some voters, and elections staff, did feel intimidated by the crowd and we did provide escorts past the group. One of the escorts was the county executive.”
Bryan Graham, chairman of the Fairfax County Democrats, was visibly shocked by the actions he saw and took to Twitter to say: “the Republicans are straight-up attempting to intimidate voters at the government center.”
“I was there when the county executive was there and I saw him walk multiple people through the crowd because they didn’t feel safe,” Graham said. “I don’t think it’s appropriate. We shouldn’t be doing things to make people feel unsafe.”
He added that he’d “never seen or heard of anything like this happening before.”
Election officials were ultimately forced to open another area of the Fairfax County Government Center just to provide a safe place for voters to wait away from Trump’s voter intimidation team.
Because several states have already begun early voting and because Donald Trump has clearly instructed his fanatics to disrupt what he claims will be a “rigged” election, officials from across the country are taking Trump’s disruption threats seriously.
Or, in other words, they expect more of the same voter intimidation within the coming weeks.
I wonder why somebody did not call police and have these fools arrested? This is illegal.