State leaders, voting experts and advocates say they are preparing for an unusual level of confusion and chaos Tuesday as voters cast their ballots in a historically bitter presidential race.
Early voters in some states have faced hours-long lines the past several days. Democrats have filed a flurry of last-minute lawsuits alleging voter intimidation by Donald Trump supporters. And there have been some heated polling site confrontations between Trump voters and Hillary Clinton backers.
Election monitors are especially worried this year about the specter of voter intimidation after calls by the Republican candidate for his supporters to stake out polling places and watch for fraud.
Election officials in Pennsylvania and Arizona have become so concerned in recent days about potential intimidation that they issued advisories spelling out what types of threatening behavior are banned and the exact dimensions of buffer zones surrounding polling places.
“Individuals who conspire to interfere with a person’s right to vote can face up to 10 years in prison,” read a notice issued by Pennsylvania’s secretary of state after Trump singled out Philadelphia as a place for his supporters to scrutinize.
The concerns have led to extensive contingency plans and a heavy workload for state officials, lawyers and election experts, who are trying to monitor voting problems and troubleshoot them in real time.
“The number and tenor of calls we’ve received about problems, the amount of litigation you already see, it all reflects the moment we’re in,” said Kristen Clarke, president of the nonpartisan Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
On Tuesday, Clarke’s group will be running the nation’s largest independent effort to field voter complaints, questions and problems. The nonpartisan umbrella organization called Election Protection will have 4,500 legal volunteers answering calls to its 866-OUR-VOTE hotline, and 2,500 volunteers stationed at polling sites around the country.
Clarke’s group has set up a war room at its headquarters in Washington – a cavernous space where hundreds of pro-bono lawyers are stationed at computers as they answer voters’ calls.
But the intensity of this year’s election, Clarke said, has exhausted many of her lawyers and volunteers before Election Day has arrived. These attorneys have fought attempts to purge residents from voter rolls in New York, Georgia and North Carolina. They’ve investigated reports such as one last week during early voting in Cleveland that a security guard was turning away voters because a parking lot with available spaces was supposedly full.
LONG WAITS AT THE POLLS
Among Clarke’s biggest concerns for Tuesday are long lines.
On Sunday, the line at the sole early voting station in Cincinnati stretched at least a quarter-mile, with estimates of those waiting in the thousands. Food trucks at one point handed out free tacos and cupcakes as encouragement. Early voters also faced long lines in California, Arizona and Nevada.
In addition to those states, election experts say, extensive waits are a particular concern in Florida and Ohio, given the states’ election history. In 2012, some precincts in Miami were so clogged that some voters were still casting ballots at 1 a.m. as President Obama was making his victory speech.
In the most hotly contested states, many lawyers have been deployed by both parties as well as independent voting rights groups. The lawyers will be stationed inside polling places to help resolve disputes.
The Justice Department will send more than 500 workers to 28 states to monitor polls on Election Day. The deployment is significantly smaller – by at least 280 from 2012 – because of a Supreme Court decision that Justice officials think limits the federal government’s role at polling places.
With just five lawyers on its voting rights team, the ACLU had to draft its Election Day strategy more judiciously – deciding to send them to Philadelphia, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Miami and the last location most likely North Carolina.
“The state laws vary so much that you have to prepare for it. And the states where it’s close, that’s where the temptation will be greatest for voter intimidation tactics,” said Dale Ho, the ACLU’s voting rights director.
His lawyers are landing with restraining orders and injunctions pre-drafted and ready to be filed, he said. “It’s like those fire tools behind the glass: ‘Break in case of emergency.'”
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