Judge Orders RNC to Detail Voter Fraud Pacts With Trump Campaign
A federal judge is ordering the Republican National Committee to detail any agreements it has with Donald Trump’s campaign to engage in “ballot security” efforts in connection with next week’s election — something the national GOP has been banned from doing for decades without court approval.
The order also instructs the RNC to explain by 5 p.m. Tuesday what Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence were talking about in recent comments when they said that Trump’s campaign was working closely with the RNC to make sure there is no fraud at the polls.
Newark, N.J.-based U.S. District Court John Vazquez issued the order Monday after the Democratic National Committee went to court last week to allege that the RNC was violating consent decrees from the 1980s settling a case alleging that GOP pollwatchers sought to intimidate minority voters in a practice then known as “caging.”
The agreements allow the RNC to organize pollwatchers, but prohibit any effort to intimidate voters as they enter a polling place or to challenge individual voters, except as part of a program approved in advance by the court.
The RNC insists it has worked to ensure compliance with the agreement and submitted to the court a series of memos sent to its personnel, national committee members and others from August through this month reminding them about the consent decree and the need to remain at arms length from all ballot security efforts. The memos tell RNC workers, officials and volunteers not to engage in poll watching efforts at all, not to take video or audio recordings at polling places and not to mention ballot fraud concerns on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
However, in August, Pence appeared to indicate there was a joint effort by the Trump campaign and the RNC to combat voter fraud.
“The Trump Campaign and the Republican National Committee are working very, very closely with state governments and secretaries of state all over the country to ensure ballot integrity,” Pence said at a town hall meeting in Denver in August.
In addition, Conway reportedly told the Washington Post last month that the Trump campaign is “actively working with the national committee, the official party, and campaign lawyers to monitor precincts around the country.”
The DNC also filed declarations from several of its pollwatchers Monday saying fellow pollwatchers at early voting sites in Nevada said they were sent by the RNC, but were told not to reveal that affiliation.
In 2009, the RNC asked the judge assigned to the “caging” case since its inception in 1981, Dickinson Debevoise, to lift the order. He declined, but reined in the decree somewhat, narrowing who could move to enforce the order and allowing the RNC to submit ballot security plans just 10 days in advance instead of the previous 20. He also left the order in place through December 2017, but said it could be extended if the the DNC proved the RNC was violating it.
Some of the RNC legal guidance issued this year warns that violations of the consent decree could result in its extension.
The RNC appealed Debevoise’s 2009 ruling to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the decision. The judge, an appointee of President Jimmy Carter, died last year at age 91. When the DNC moved to enforce the decree last week, the case was randomly reassigned to Vazquez, who was appointed by President Barack Obama.
