During the presidential election of 1863, at the height of the Civil War, federal troops reportedly descended on polling places in Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri and prevented people they deemed disloyal from voting. This prompted a fierce national debate that culminated in Congress passing an 1865 law barring federal “troops or armed men” from “any place” where an election is being held. The central goal of this law, according to its proponents, was “to prevent the President and his officers from interfering in elections,” which are run by the states.
Keeping armed federal officers away from the polls, they argued, was necessary to preserve democracy, even in the midst of civil war. This has been the clear law, and the respected policy of every presidential administration, for over a century. Ahead of the midterms, top Trump Administration officials have publicly refused to rule out the possibility of sending federal agents to the polls.
In September, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin claimed that immigration officers could be sent to polling places to “serve a warrant” as part of immigration enforcement operations or if “there is a threat” to those polling places, adding “we’ll be where we need to be.” “ICE isn’t there to patrol the polling places,” hedged Mullin. As Daniel Caine, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pointedly said this August, any request to send military troops to election sites would be an “unlawful order.” The same holds true for any other armed federal agents. The only exception to the prohibition is to “repel armed enemies of the United States.” The Congress of 1865 originally included a second exception, allowing armed federal agents to “keep the peace at the polls.” But Congress repealed that exception in 1909 because lawmakers feared that federal authorities could point to any kind of disturbance as a pretext to deploy federal forces.
In other words, unless a hostile foreign power attacks voting sites using weapons, it is a crime for any armed federal agents to go to those sites, even to quell a disruption. And they are certainly not allowed to show up for routine policing or immigration actions. If sending ICE to the polls is so plainly illegal, then why do top administration officials keep refusing to rule it out?
The federal government has been conducting indiscriminate and often violent immigration enforcement actions in communities across the country. At the same time, the administration has been peddling conspiracy theories about widespread illegal voting, often targeting communities of color. The administration has redirected thousands of homeland security agents away from critical transnational security threats to hunt for elusive noncitizen voters.
These efforts are not uncovering any significant problems. Federal and state law already bar noncitizens from voting in federal and state elections, and our election system does a terrific job of ensuring that only eligible citizens vote, with vanishingly rare exceptions—as dozens of studies, election reviews, and painstaking investigations have already confirmed. This intimidation campaign is taking a toll.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
