WASHINGTON — Media reports of possible voter-suppression activity involving groups that support Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump have swelled concerns about widespread voter intimidation in the November general election.
Trump has repeatedly excited his base with charges about a "rigged" election and he has claimed that reporters and Democratic political operatives are in cahoots against him.
On Thursday morning, Bloomberg News quoted a senior campaign official from "inside the Trump bunker" as saying, "We have three major voter suppression operations under way" to discourage voting among three Democratic-leaning groups: "white liberals," young women and African-Americans.
The report came amid other recent revelations of grass-roots volunteers orchestrating exit polling and monitoring at polling places in major cities and swing states nationwide.
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One such plan comes from Trump ally Roger Stone's group, Stop the Steal, a tax-exempt political organization that promoted claims that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is trying to "cheat" or rig November's election.
The Guardian reported last week that Stop the Steal will be active across the country on Election Day. Stone told The Guardian that nearly 1,300 people — all volunteers from Citizens for Trump — will do exit polling in cities like Charlotte, Detroit, Cleveland and Las Vegas.
Stone, a longtime Republican political consultant and well-known strategist, could not be reached for comment.
Earlier this week, The Huffington Post reported on a widespread volunteer effort by Trump supporters known as "Vote Protectors" that would send volunteers to ask voters about "election fraud" as they exited polling places.
Vote Protectors has given its volunteers a script and advised them to act as "citizen journalists," according to The Huffington Post. The group has said it will simply conduct exit polling, not harass voters.
Vote Protectors bills itself as an anti-voter-fraud group. But The Huffington Post reported that the group would issue fake ID badges to the volunteer pollsters, a tactic that has been used in the past to intimidate voters.
This "external observation" of polling places "by free-floating people who are kind of playing by their own rules" can lead to confusion and confrontation, said Logan Churchwell, communications director for True the Vote, a conservative voter rights organization that trains poll watchers.
"If anyone is running around in an unofficial capacity with a fake badge or anything like that, that is not our organizing strategy. We don't condone it. We don't train people to do it. We don't even give hypotheticals in how you could do it. There's so many ways it can go wrong and be counterproductive. Even if you're doing the right thing, you're still technically going to be doing the wrong thing," Churchwell said.
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The specter of untrained, partisan polling place observers inspired by Trump's race-baiting rhetoric has caused concern among minority voters, who've been frequent targets of voter intimidation in the past.
"We are concerned that this year is going to be the worst year ever when it comes to voter suppression at the polls for Arab-Americans, Muslim Americans and those perceived to be either Arab or Muslims," said Samer Khalaf, the president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
Khalaf said calls for people to "protect the integrity" of the vote often led to trouble.
"Our fear is that people are going to heed this call," Khalaf said this week during a conference call with reporters. "They're going to go out to those areas that are predominantly Arab or Muslim and disrupt the vote," through intimidation outside the polls and unfounded voter challenges.
The North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP has notified the state board of elections about voter registration challenges that disproportionately target African-Americans in Moore, Cumberland and Beaufort counties. The NAACP claims the challenges violate the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.
Erin Hustings, a senior policy analyst for the NALEO Educational Fund, said the group expected a 17 percent national increase over 2012 in the number of Latinos who cast votes in November. The rise is due mainly to increased naturalizations and greater migration from Puerto Rico due to economic concerns.
Because many will be voting for the first time, "they and other Latinos are, we fear, vulnerable to intimidation and other discriminatory behaviors this election season," Hustings said this week.
"We're concerned about intimidation and discrimination not just happening in urban areas and in places with long-standing Latino communities like Florida and Texas," Hustings said, but also in rural areas with newly arrived and growing Latino populations.
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In the past three months, Churchwell said, 18,000 to 20,000 people have taken an online poll-watcher training course offered by True the Vote.
All poll watchers should make themselves known to poll workers and election officials to avoid the appearance of impropriety, Churchwell said. "If you want to observe the process, you need to be on the record, on paper, in the polling place, in the absentee counting center. It all has to be aboveboard," Churchwell said.
Failure to do so is inviting trouble.
"You may have a perfectly good heart. You're just trying to make sure there's no funny business going on. But if you're wandering around a parking lot taking pictures and asking questions, or anything of the like, people might assume you're trying to do something wrong," Churchwell said. "You don't want to engage in that. It's not worth it."
Trump recently expressed concerns about voter fraud in Texas after a Tarrant County, Texas, woman said her vote had switched from Republican to Democratic when she cast her ballot at an electronic voting machine earlier this week. An investigation determined she did not follow the proper instructions.
On Wednesday, nearly 90 civil rights and voting advocacy groups sent letters to the nation's 50 secretary of state offices calling for their special attention to the tense atmosphere surrounding the upcoming election. The groups want state election officials to have plans in place to deal with any problems on Election Day.
Compounding the problem is the Justice Department's inability — for the first time in more than 50 years — to deploy hundreds of special election observers who can monitor Election Day activity at polling places to help ensure compliance with federal election laws.
A 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision required that a court order be issued before the special observers could be dispatched. In their place next month, the Justice Department will deploy a smaller number of department attorneys and other personnel who — unlike the observers — must get permission from local election officials before they can enter polling sites in 23 states where they will be sent.
To help ensure the integrity of the vote, the nonpartisan Election Protection coalition is recruiting 4,500 legal volunteers and 2,500 grass-roots volunteers to monitor activity at mostly minority polling locations in 29 states.
In addition, the League of Women Voters will have election observers working around the country to make sure voters are protected.