Republican state legislators, including dozens tied to the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), are pushing to loosen restrictions on poll watching, which has historically been aimed at preventing Black Americans from voting.
These poll watching initiatives are part of a broader movement to suppress voting in the wake of a presidential election and violent insurrection that didn’t achieve what these lawmakers wanted.
The Republican Party’s use of poll watching as an intimidation tactic has a particularly notorious history, and was essentially prohibited in 1982 when a federal judge brokered a consent decree between the Republican and Democratic national committees barring the GOP from engaging in “ballot security” and voter intimidation efforts without prior judicial approval. Before then, the RNC had hired armed, off-duty police officers to patrol majority-minority precincts wearing “National Ballot Security Task Force” armbands.
May 20, 2021 - 9:09am
Republican state legislators, including dozens tied to the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), are pushing to loosen restrictions on poll watching, which has historically been aimed at preventing Black Americans from voting.
These poll watching initiatives are part of a broader movement to suppress voting in the wake of a presidential election and violent insurrection that didn t achieve what these lawmakers wanted.
The Republican Party s use of poll watching as an intimidation tactic has a particularly notorious history, and was essentially prohibited in 1982 when a federal judge brokered a consent decree between the Republican and Democratic national committees barring the GOP from engaging in ballot security and voter intimidation efforts without prior judicial approval. Before then, the RNC had hired armed, off-duty police officers to patrol majority-minority precincts wearing National Ballot Security Task Force armbands.
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