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Trump Vows to Send Election “Monitors” to Maine After Far-Right Conspiracies Spread

As right-wing Trump allies fearmongered about Somali American voter fraud, Maine trained local law enforcement officers on keeping armed federal agents out.

With voters set to cast ballots in two critical races that could help determine control of both chambers of the U.S. Congress, fears of potential voter suppression are running high in Maine.

Officials in the state have prepared for months against the possibility of election interference from federal officials, and the state remains on high alert in the run-up to the general election on November 3.

Training materials were updated this year to include references to federal statutes barring armed federal agents from polling sites.

Training materials were updated this year to include references to federal statutes barring armed federal agents from polling sites.

Training materials for law enforcement officials in the state, obtained by The Intercept through a public records request, were updated this year for the elections to include explicit references to federal statutes barring armed federal agents from polling sites. 

In an interview with the New York Times this week, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said the inclusion of such references was a direct defense in response to the fearmongering around election integrity from President Donald Trump and his administration.

“This is the first time ever that we have had to engage in scenario planning to safeguard against potential federal interference in elections,” Bellows said. “It seems like the federal government is now adversarial to the states.”

Bellows’s office offered up the training slideshow, which cites a U.S. law that bars armed civil or military officers from posting at voting sites, to law enforcement personnel in the run-up to Maine’s primary election in June and again in the lead-up to the general election on November 5.

Nationwide, Democratic officials have expressed fears that the Trump Administration might weaponize U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or other federal agencies to undermine the rights of voters. In New York, state Attorney General Letitia James issued a reminder to voters that federal officials may not “police the polls,” and the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP called out the assignment of federal election monitors to two counties in the state as potential intimidation.

DHS Was Designed as a Weapon

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has sounded the alarm about the alleged scourge of non-citizens on the voter rolls, sending agents from the FBI and ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division to probe alleged fraud. A handful of people in California, New York, and North Carolina have been indicted for allegedly voting as non-citizens, but a review of similar cases by the Washington Post found that such cases were often the result of honest mistakes.

In Maine, worries about federal interventions at polling........

© The Intercept