Intimidation at the Polls

Progressive groups have derided Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump for asking citizens to prevent voter fraud — yet they seem eager for a swarm of international observers to enter the U.S. for election day.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe will send 500 international observers to watch the U.S. presidential election. That’s about 10 times more than the group sent in 2012, Reuters reported Wednesday.

Trump broadened the effort nationally, asking volunteers to sign up on the campaign website to be a “Trump election observer.”

The deployment comes in response to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a liberal group that wrote a letter to the OSCE asking for international monitors to watch Trump’s monitors.

So many monitors monitoring each other could make for crowded polling places. But shouldn’t international observers — that might not have America’s best interest at heart — cause at least as much concern as a few Trump supporters?

MoveOn.org sent out an alarmist email to supporters Sunday decrying Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s call for Election Day monitors of what the left-wing organization said “could be an attempt at voter intimidation that just might work, unless federal and state authorities take action.”

[lz_jwplayer video= “mdYnSUeX” ads=”true”]

An uncanny strategy. Accuse your opponents of intimidation, then threaten to use the heavy hand of the government “to take immediate action” to stop what MoveOn called, “Trump’s goons.” Or, as what appears to be happening, expect election observers from an international group will play it straight when one of the candidates is decidedly anti-globalism.

The Left’s fit began after a rally this month in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where Trump asked for voters to ensure Democrats don’t try to steal the election.

“I hope you people can sort of not just vote on the eighth [but] go around and look and watch other polling places and make sure that it’s 100 percent fine,” Trump said. “We’re going to watch Pennsylvania. Go down to certain areas and watch and study, make sure other people don’t come in and vote five times.”

Trump broadened the effort nationally, asking volunteers to sign up on the campaign website to be a “Trump election observer.”

Put aside how one feels about Trump. Not wanting people to vote five times should have crossover appeal.

However, Democrats and progressive organizations have a habit of making bogus claims of voter intimidation or voter suppression as a means of rallying their base, while ignoring the real threat of voter fraud.

Before asking for a donation, the MoveOn.org message asserts, “Some election experts are even warning of the possibility of violence at the polls as a result of Trump’s incitements.”

“That’s why we’re launching an emergency campaign calling on secretaries of state — who are the chief elections officials at the state level — and the federal Justice Department to take immediate action to stop Trump’s voter suppression,” the MoveOn message says.

That’s how the Left operates, said Matthew Vadum, senior vice president for the Capital Research Center, a nonprofit watchdog group,

“The Left is all about intimidation and it’s often quite brazen,” Vadum told LifeZette.

“They’re not stupid. They know it’s not burdensome to require people to prove who they are before letting them vote,” Vadum continued. “They oppose voter ID laws because they’re fine with election fraud. They’re fine with using thuggery to get their way. If you give money to the wrong cause, they’ll hound you about it. If you take the wrong stand, they’ll try to get you fired. If you say the wrong thing, they’ll smear you as racist, xenophobic, sexist, a tool of the powerful and so on. They don’t believe in free speech.”

It was the Obama administration’s IRS that targeted Tea Party and conservative groups prior to the 2012 election. More recently, a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general have set out to prosecute civil or criminal cases against nonprofit groups that question global warming.

[lz_related_box id=”193129″]

Trump’s call for election monitors may or may not be effective in preventing voter fraud. It’s more than fair to question the wisdom of calling an election “rigged” before a single vote is cast. But it’s certainly no worse than Democrats pre-Election Day ritual of making wild accusations about voter suppression and voter intimidation without even a shred of evidence.

The bigger point is that Trump has called for voluntary action by concerned private citizens — not by police forces or government agents. The Left’s default position is action by government bureaucratic thugs as a means to a political end.

Under the worst case scenario, if Trump election observers engage in the same type of intimidation tactics the New Black Panther Party used in on the 2008 election, they will almost certainly face severe legal consequences. Though Eric Holder’s politicized Justice Department dropped the New Black Panther case, this private organization at least faced the threat of prosecution. There is very little recourse for someone threatened by a government official.

Government bureaucrats — as we learned from the IRS investigation and Lois Lerner — rarely face accountability. That’s why the Left’s playbook for intimidating political opponents is far more dangerous than anything they could accuse their opponents of doing.