While President Trump has threatened to send law enforcement to polling places for the upcoming presidential election, federal law prohibits deploying 'troops or armed men” to any polling place in the country.
is threatening to send law enforcement to polling places for the upcoming presidential election, part of a growing pattern of rhetoric in which he has suggested that he wants to make it harder for Americans to vote., it’s not exactly up to him. The effort also could be viewed as a means to intimidate minority voters, who tend to support Democrats.
“We’re going to have everything,” he said. “We’re going to have sheriffs, and we’re going to have law enforcement, and we’re going to hopefully have U.S. attorneys and we’re going to have everybody, and attorney generals. But it’s very hard.”prohibits sending “any troops or armed men” to any polling place in the country, and any effort to send them is a criminal offense punishable by up to five years in prison.
The Justice Department routinely conducts monitoring of polling places on Election Day with both federal observers, who are generally allowed inside polling places without written permission, as well as prosecutors and some FBI agents to ensure compliance with federal voting-rights laws. In past years, the Justice Department has compelled U.S. attorney’s offices around the country to assign specific prosecutors as election officers who would oversee potential election-crime matters in their districts, including enforcing federal criminal law prohibiting voter intimidation.
Trump has no authority to send in local law enforcement or state attorneys general. That is up to the states, of which several expressly ban law enforcement at polls. Pennsylvania and Tennessee, for example, ban officers unless they are voting. Other states, like New York, allow for police to play roles at the polling sites and some have police staged for ballot security.urged voters not to pay “any attention” to what Trump was saying on the matter.
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