This week, I’m turning The Briefing over to my colleague Hayne Yoon, senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, to tell you about the safeguards against intimidation at the polls.
—Michael Waldman

The Trump administration has tried in numerous ways to interfere with the upcoming midterms, often to restrict access to the ballot and suppress votes. As the election nears, speculation has arisen that the administration could next send ICE agents to polling places as an intimidation tactic.

The first thing to say about this prospect is that it would be flatly illegal. As I explain in a new article, federal law has barred armed agents from polling places for well over a century — except in the event of an armed enemy attack on the country — and that prohibition remains in effect to this day. A separate statute prohibits intimidating voters or election workers.

In the event of illegal ICE presence at election sites, local officials are prepared to respond. A few recent incidents are illustrative.

In May, nine ICE agents swarmed a car in the parking lot of the public library in Las Palmas, Texas. The library was a polling site, and it was the early voting period in the primary. When the Bexar County sheriff learned of this situation, he went to the scene and reportedly told the ICE agents to leave, which they did.

A few weeks later, during the California primary, several ICE agents were spotted in the parking lot of a polling place in Simi Valley. After a concerned witness from an immigrant support network reported the sighting, park rangers arrived and persuaded the agents to depart.

Later in June, during New York’s primary, ICE agents entered a library in downtown Syracuse that was being used as a polling site. They were seeking to interview a poll worker as part of an investigation triggered by her social media posts, unrelated to the election. No voters were there at the time, and the county elections commissioner rushed to the site to make sure voting would not be disrupted.

It’s worth noting that there is no indication that the ICE agents were targeting election sites in any of these cases. And in each case, local officials moved swiftly to ensure they left election sites.

Nevertheless, the presence of the federal agents provoked fear and anxiety in these communities for good reason. Tensions around the administration’s mass deportation campaign have never been higher, turbocharged by a $200 billion ICE budget that has empowered armed and often masked agents to use racial profiling to stop and arrest people. Many of the victims have had no criminal background, and many have been lawfully present in the country or even U.S. citizens. Worst of all, we have seen certain ICE agents rely on violent and abusive tactics, including killing individuals who posed no immediate threat with impunity.

All this could make us despair, but it shouldn’t. Not only can we succeed, but we already are succeeding. ICE abuses have sparked outpourings of solidarity and loud demands for accountability across the country. The way that communities have handled the scattered instances of ICE agents at the polls is also reassuring. Local officials and law enforcement are making sure that everyone, including federal agents, follows the law, and that voting proceeds smoothly. Civil society, including poll watchers and others, will be ready to document any concerning incidents and report them. Litigators, including the Brennan Center, will be standing by to protect voters’ rights in court if any voter is intimidated.

Voters can also do their part. The Brennan Center, alongside Asian Americans Advancing Justice, FIRM, and Unidos, published a Know Your Rights resource for voters detailing what they can do before and during voting if there are federal agents at their polling site.

The administration’s campaign to interfere in our elections is failing — from blatantly illegal executive orders, to vindictive criminal investigations, to a grab-bag of threats to states, localities, election officials, and voter mobilization groups. Court after court has struck down many of these efforts. American voters, too, must stand up to this campaign of intimidation.

Fortunately, voters have seen through the bluster. A recent poll found 67 percent of Americans believe that Trump’s claims about election rigging in California were made to sow doubt over the legitimacy of the election.

During and after the Civil War, federal lawmakers recognized the danger of an executive branch that could try to usurp states’ power over elections. They passed laws preventing election interference that protect us today. As they knew well, our democracy depends on all of us casting our votes and using our voices to hold elected officials accountable at the ballot box. We have the tools we need to protect against abuse.