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Donald Trump urged members of the largest police union in the US to “watch for voter fraud” at a meeting of the Fraternal Order of Police in North Carolina.
The former president yet again pushed his baseless and debunked voter fraud claims regarding the 2020 election, claiming that Democrats could only win by fraudulent means in November.
“Watch for the voter fraud, because we win without voter fraud,” he told the meeting of the national board of the police union in Charlotte on Friday. “We win so easily.”
Trump spoke to the Fraternal Order of Police, which has more than 370,000 members, just hours after the union endorsed him, as they did in 2016 and 2020. They most recently backed a Democrat in 1996, when President Bill Clinton was running for re-election.
He argued that police officers could make some voters afraid.
“You can keep it down just by watching, because, believe it or not, they’re afraid of that badge,” Trump told the group. “They’re afraid of you people. They’re afraid of that more than anything else.”
Before a single ballot has been cast, Trump has claimed that the November election will be riddled with fraud as he prepares to possibly call the integrity of the election into question if he loses again. While he has told his followers to monitor voters, telling a police union to do so increasingly makes it appear as if he’s pushing for voter intimidation.
Katie Reisner, a senior counsel at the nonpartisan States United Democracy Center, told The New York Times that election officials and law enforcement have tried for years to improve community relations surrounding the police and elections.
She added that Trump’s statements could negatively affect years of planning and work.
“The idea of Trump telling the Fraternal Order of Police to take matters into their own hands and kind of go rogue, it’s certainly not a positive from a healthy elections standpoint,” she told The Times.
“But it’s also really counter to a lot of work that’s happening in a lot of jurisdictions to make sure that law enforcement are both adhering to the law and not surprising their communities on Election Day or during voting,” she added.
Law enforcement has previously been sent out to intimidate certain voters in the US, such as in the Jim Crow-era South. Poll taxes and tests supposed to restrict the poll access of Black voters were used to enforce racist laws.
As recently as in 1981, New Jersey Republicans employed off-duty officers to monitor polling places in mostly Black communities. They carried weapons and wore armbands stating they were part of a ballot security task force, The Times noted.
A lawsuit followed, and the Republican National Committee had to adopt a consent decree for the next 40 years, requiring the GOP to get permission from the courts for any new ballot security efforts.
Police tend to play a smaller role in probing election-related crimes. Such violations are usually investigated by state agencies alongside election officials. But election denialists have pushed law enforcement to take a more active role since 2020.
Trump has told officers to be more aggressive and has praised police who have done so, and he has said that he will work to pass legislation to improve police protection. Back in May, he promised to give officers immunity from prosecution.
