From Voter Suppression to Voter Intimidation

For years, Rethuglicans have been doing their best to shape the electorate to their liking, whether it's Rethug-controlled state legislatures gerrymandering districts to minimize Democratic representation, passing voter suppression laws targeting minorities and other unfavorable demographic groups, or limiting ballot access by reducing voting sites or restricting hours for voting. Now, the Rethugs have their ideal candidate at the top of the ballot: a narcissistic demagogue who won't say whether he'll accept the will of the people in November.

Sociopath Donald "Rump" Trump has been claiming that the upcoming elections will be rigged, now that he's behind and falling in the polls. It's bad enough that he's undermining public confidence in the elections (which are administered by the individual states). He's also telling his gullible (and often violent) supporters to travel to urban / minority polling sites to "monitor" the elections and prevent nonexistent "voter fraud." Clearly, it's not about "election protection"; it's about intimidation, a violation of Federal law. Fortunately, voting rights groups, civic organizations and state and local elections officials are pushing back on Rump's own rigging efforts:

"But Trump’s threat to voting has galvanized state and local election officials and voting advocates across the political spectrum in a pushback against the most serious voter intimidation effort that the country has faced since the 1965 Voting Rights Act ended the routine denial of the franchise to Southern blacks. Republican secretaries of state from coast to coast have lambasted his remarks and pledged to maintain the integrity of the election process. At least one Republican secretary of state, Paul Pate of Iowa, took Trump’s comments as a personal insult. As Salon noted, it’s Republican secretaries of state who control the election process in most of the battleground states, so Trump did the party no favors—no surprise there."

Rump's threat to our democracy is real and imminent. His pathological narcissism causes him to dismiss any possibility of defeat, aside from a "rigged" election, and there are enough of his delusional followers to make election day a potential nightmare for voters if they're not stopped.