Thousands of volunteers train to watch Trump's election monitors at US midterm polls
Thousands of people across the United States are training to be poll observers, ready to look out for any interference or the presence of immigration officers (ICE) on midterm election day. The volunteer build-up has gathered pace since the US justice department announced plans to send about 1,000 federal monitors to polling sites.
Stevie Lyn, of Phoenix, Arizona, is angry at what she has seen in her neighbourhood over the past year. Since ICE began conducting raids across the city, her Latino neighbours on the west side have had to hide in their homes, too scared to grocery shop, work and vote. That is why she volunteered to become a poll observer.
'I had to take the anger, because it was eating me alive, and direct it towards a constructive activity,' Lyn said. She was trained by the grassroots non-profit organisations Living United for Change in Arizona (Lucha) and the Arizona Center for Empowerment (Ace), both focused on immigrant rights.
For July's primaries, Lyn sat on the back hatch of her SUV 75 feet from her local polling place — the legal distance allowed for poll observers in the state — and watched the area for any disorder. In 10 hours she encountered only one problem: a campaigner for a local legislative candidate repeatedly walked with voters beyond the legal line. When she reported it, poll workers asked the campaigner to stay back.
Lyn, who has been through observer training three times, called the primary a dress rehearsal. She has taken election day off work to observe again, and hopes she will not have much to report. 'I just want to be bored to death on 3 November,' she said. 'That's my goal.'
Lyn is one of thousands of volunteers trained by organisations like Lucha and Ace to safeguard the polls against election interference. The justice department plans to send about 1,000 federal monitors to polling sites, in what it has called the 'biggest DOJ election observer effort in history', claiming the effort will ensure elections are carried out fairly.
But critics suing the government over the plan say it could intimidate voters. And the administration has not ruled out sending ICE and other law enforcement officials to the polls. Poll observers want to be prepared to counter any intimidation, even if many expect election day to be business as usual.
'I am not naive about this administration and have my eyes wide open,' said Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor and former Obama-era justice department official. 'But this administration wants to project power that it doesn't have and finds it in their interest to get the electorate freaked out.'
On a Monday night in late September, about 20 people logged on to learn how to protect voters in Arizona. Karime Rodriguez, an organiser with Ace, explained why the role of 'constitutional observer' exists: as immigration raids surged across Arizona earlier this year, Republican state lawmakers introduced a bill to station ICE agents at polling places. That is when Ace began recruiting and training volunteers for double duty — monitoring ICE activity in vulnerable neighbourhoods and keeping watch at the polls.
'These aren't abstract polling places,' Rodriguez told the trainees. 'These are our schools, our churches, our community centers where immigration enforcement has already been taking place.' Mapping ICE activity in Maricopa and Pima counties, Ace found the neighbourhoods hit hardest by raids were often the same ones already facing barriers to voting, including polling place closures. In the two weeks before the July primary, the group recorded a spike in reported raids, and there was ICE activity around a few polling places in West Phoenix.
'ICE is in our neighborhoods and even people who are citizens are afraid that they'll be taken if they go to vote,' said César Fierros, a spokesperson for Lucha. 'We see the trucks driving by, the unmarked vehicles driving by. And we're scared because we never know who is going to be in that vehicle.'
Organisers say that heat map has become the backbone of their election protection effort, used to decide where to station observers and rapid-response volunteers on election day. The plan is to have three or four observers at every polling place, who must simply observe and report anything suspicious to the leadership team. If ICE agents show up, leaders of Lucha and Ace will be alerted.
Groups like Lucha and Ace are preparing volunteers all across the country. In Pennsylvania, more than 250 people took part in poll watcher training hosted by the state's Democratic party on the same Monday night in September. Jack Doyle, the party's communications director, said Democrats are building 'an unprecedented voter protection program' — thousands of volunteer observers at priority locations, volunteer attorneys in every county, and a hotline staffed in English, Spanish, Mandarin, Vietnamese and Korean.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has seen a similar surge. Since June, 68,000 new volunteers have signed up to be 'democracy defenders', according to Molly McGrath, the ACLU's director of national democracy campaigns. The organisation has recruited 1,700 poll monitors in Texas, 650 in Georgia and 120 in Arizona's Maricopa county.
Voting rights experts, however, are sceptical about Trump's election monitoring plan. Levitt said it was not the largest in history — before the supreme court's 2013 ruling weakened the Voting Rights Act, the justice department's observer operation was far bigger. Lauren Miller Karalunas, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, noted that justice department monitors carry no special authority and are subject to the same laws as any other observer in the state. On 3 November, in other words, the watchers will themselves be watched — by thousands of trained volunteers.
