US elections 2020: Veteran Republican operative leads Trump’s ‘army’ of poll watchers

A veteran Republican operative who received his begin in politics by serving to to steer a choose to throw out a whole lot of mail-in ballots is organizing an “army” of volunteers for President Donald Trump’s marketing campaign to observe voting in Democratic-leaning areas on Tuesday.

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Mike Roman, Trump’s director of Election Day Operations, is a former White House aide from Pennsylvania who gathered claims in 1993 of voter fraud, leading to a courtroom ruling overturning election outcomes and getting his candidate seated within the Pennsylvania State Senate.

It’s a technique that Trump has been advocating on Twitter and on the stump.

For months the president has been attempting to undercut the validity of mail-in ballots, a long-used technique of voting that was up this yr due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the final week, Trump has additionally recommended that any votes tabulated after Election Day are suspect, whilst his marketing campaign has opposed plans by elections officers to begin counting mail-in ballots early.

Roman, who beforehand ran the secretive in-house intelligence unit for the political community led by GOP mega-donors Charles and David Koch, has organized what the marketing campaign claims is 50,000 ballot watchers. Many a lot of them registered by way of an “Army For Trump” web site that asks his supporters to “enlist” in his reelection combat. The marketing campaign additionally has employed full-time employees in no less than 11 battleground states to arrange the trouble, a number of of them younger attorneys.

“Our Elections Day Operations are designed to make sure that everyone that is legally entitled to vote has the opportunity to vote, once,” Erin Perrine, the Trump 2020 director of press communications, says in a video aimed toward recruiting volunteers. “We all know that the Democrats will be up to their old dirty tricks on Election Day to make sure President Trump doesn’t win. We cannot let that happen.”

The Trump marketing campaign portrays its Election Day Operations effort as conventional poll-watching lengthy carried out by each events. But Democrats and a few Republicans who’ve adopted Roman’s political profession are apprehensive that Trump’s staff is extra in sowing doubt in regards to the vote than safeguarding it.

“Mike Roman has made many unsubstantiated allegations of fraud and rigging, he has a history and general reputation as someone who stirs things up, so his presence in any Election Day issues gives me pause,” mentioned Rick Hasen, a legislation professor on the University of California, Irvine, who research elections legislation.

Trump 2020 spokeswoman Thea McDonald known as such assertions “laughable.” She mentioned the marketing campaign’s “rule-abiding poll watchers” are merely attempting to “ensure a fair election.”

Both campaigns have zeroed in on Pennsylvania because the battleground state that may resolve the election. Speaking in regards to the Keystone State on Sunday, Trump mentioned that when election evening is over, “We’re going in with our lawyers.”

“I don’t think it’s fair that we have to wait a long period of time,” Trump mentioned. “They should have put their ballots in.”

Roman, who declined to remark for this story, has expertise doing what Trump describes.

He received his political begin working poll safety operations in Philadelphia for Republican Bruce Marks, who campaigned for the Pennsylvania State Senate in 1993 and misplaced narrowly to his Democratic opponent.

As Roman and Marks inform it in a June weblog put up on Marks’ web site, management of the Pennsylvania State Senate turned on the race, and “the Democratic machine’s operatives descended on the District to steal the election.” Their authorized staff later satisfied a federal choose that there have been so many ballots in Latino neighborhoods with irregularities that he threw out a whole lot of ballots, overturning the end result and sending Marks to a State Senate seat.

Marks, who has made his authorized profession representing rich Ukrainian and Russian shoppers and briefly defended Trump’s 2016 marketing campaign, mentioned Roman’s working-class background gave him an innate understanding of ballot-box politics.

“He is not some Ivy leaguer with a bow tie, he learned what it is like to be exposed to elections and face voter fraud on the street,” mentioned Marks, including that Roman grew up in a rowhouse. “If there are problems on Election Day and after, I am ready and willing to help. Mike is a great guy.”

In the 2008 presidential election, Roman made a splash by selling a video of two members of the New Black Panther Party standing outdoors a polling place in Philadelphia, considered one of them holding a billy membership. Though no violence occurred, the video was hyped nationally by these on the proper as proof of Democratic voter intimidation, whereas these on the left criticized it as an try to stoke racial divisions in the course of the election of the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama.

The New Black Panther video raised Roman’s profile throughout the Republican Party, and he quickly landed a job on the Koch community investigating Democrats, environmental activists and others on the left. A 2014 tax return for the Koch-supported Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce Inc. lists Roman’s title as vp of analysis, and says he was paid greater than $285,000 in annual wage and advantages.

In 2016, the Kochs disbanded the intelligence unit and Roman went to work for the Trump marketing campaign organizing poll-watching operations. After Trump gained, Roman landed a job within the workplace of then-White House counsel Don McGahn as director of particular initiatives and analysis, although it’s not instantly clear what his duties entailed.

Roman left the White House in 2018 and shortly shifted again to Trump’s marketing campaign. There he has led an aggressive effort that hasn’t waited for Election Day to start difficult the voting course of.

In Pennsylvania final month, a Trump marketing campaign lawyer submitted surveillance photographs of three voters who gave the impression to be depositing multiple poll in an elections drop field. Under state legislation, voters should return their very own ballots until they’re disabled or in any other case unable to take action for themselves. However, elections officers mentioned the Trump marketing campaign produced inadequate proof to show the voters within the photographs have been violating the legislation.

The Pennsylvania grievance seems to be a part of a wider nationwide technique by Trump and his allies to lift accusations of voter fraud and problem ballots in areas with excessive charges of registered Democrats.

In Texas, Republicans sought to toss out virtually 127,000 votes solid from drive-thru lanes within the Democratic stronghold of Harris County, which incorporates Houston. Both the GOP-dominated Texas Supreme Court and a federal choose appointed by President George W. Bush rejected claims that drive-thru voting is unlawful.

And some Democrats and election watchers additionally fear that Trump allies might search to intimidate voters headed to the polls.

In Minnesota final week, the top of the Minneapolis police union forwarded an e mail to members searching for 20 to 30 retired officers to assist function “poll challengers” at precincts in “problem” areas of town. The message was signed by William Willingham, whose e mail signature recognized him as a senior authorized adviser and state director of Election Day operations for the Trump marketing campaign.

“Poll Challengers do not ‘stop’ people, per se, but act as our eyes and ears in the field and call our hotline to document fraud,” mentioned the e-mail, a replica of which was obtained by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “We don’t necessarily want our Poll Challengers to look intimidating, they cannot carry a weapon in the polls due to state law. … We just want people who won’t be afraid in rough neighborhoods or intimidating situations.”

The Trump marketing campaign later tried to distance itself from the request for retired cops, however the e mail strengthened fears amongst voting-rights advocates that the Trump marketing campaign might revive outdated voter-suppression ways.

In 1981, the Democratic Party sued the Republican Party after a disputed state election in New Jersey the place GOP officers employed off-duty cops to patrol Black and Latino neighborhoods sporting armbands that learn “National Ballot Security Task Force.” Without admitting any wrongdoing, the Republican Party agreed to a nationwide consent decree the next yr to forgo such ways. However, on the behest of the GOP a federal choose allowed that settlement to run out in 2017.

In August, Trump himself recommended his marketing campaign may ship legislation enforcement officers to voting websites.

“We’re going to have sheriffs, and we’re going to have law enforcement, and we’re going to have, hopefully, U.S. attorneys, and we’re going to have everybody and attorney generals,” Trump mentioned throughout an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News.

Federal legislation prohibits intimidation on the polls and makes it unlawful for any federal officer to order “troops or armed men” to polling locations, until wanted to “repel armed enemies of the United States.” But such statements from the president have stoked issues amongst voting-rights advocates that some Trump supporters might take it upon themselves to indicate up outdoors polling websites in army style-gear, brandishing semi-automatic weapons.

Reed Galen, a veteran political guide who labored for John McCain’s presidential bid earlier than leaving the GOP after Trump’s nomination, mentioned he was involved about Roman’s involvement with Trump’s Elections Day Operations after listening to about his fame as an area operative in Philadelphia.

“Here you have the Army for Trump that might be official, enrolling people through the texting mechanism, but there might be tens of thousands of other people taking their own initiative” and should change into violent, mentioned Galen.

“This is what this guy does and it is bad news,” he mentioned.

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Burke reported from San Francisco. Associated Press writers Juliet Linderman in Baltimore, Jason Dearen in New York and Martha Mendoza in Santa Cruz, California, contributed to this report.

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Follow Associated Press investigative reporters Michael Biesecker at http://twitter.com/mbieseck and Garance Burke at http://twitter.com/garanceburke

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Contact AP’s world investigative staff at [email protected]