Just like the "Banana Nations. Mean looking Agents with Assault
Rifles slung over their shoulders, dressed in battle garb,
intimidating citizens as they line up to vote.
The far less expensive idea would be to train all the Poll Workers
with hand guns, and provide them with weapons. Between the Workers
and the Teachers, how much better protected would we want to be?
Carl Jarvis
On 3/15/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Law to Allow President to Send Armed Secret Service to Polling Places
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
14 March 18
SECRET SERVICE PROTECTION AT POLLING PLACES.
This section shall not prevent any officer or agent of the United States
Secret Service from providing armed protective services authorized under
section 3056 or pursuant to a Presidential memorandum at any place where a
general or special election is held.
– H.R. 2825, section 4012 [emphasis added]
The single sentence above, which amends current federal law, would give the
president unprecedented authority to send armed Secret Service agents to
any
US polling place for any reason. The law allows the president to send armed
Secret Service agents to every US polling place if he has enough agents.
The 250-page bill containing this new authority, H.R. 2825, is the
Department of Homeland Security Authorization Act, introduced in the House
on June 8, 2017, by Texas Rep. Michael McCaul with eleven fellow Republican
co-sponsors. On July 20, with little notice, the bill passed the House by a
vote of 386 to 41 (32 Democrats and 9 Republicans), after less than an hour
of scheduled debate, and went to the Senate.
The issue broke through to public attention on March 9, with a letter to
the
Senate’s party leaders, Republican Mitch McConnell and Democrat Chuck
Schumer, from secretaries of state of both parties in 19 states, calling
the
Senate’s attention to “unprecedented and shocking language currently
included in Section 4012 of HR 2825” that:
… allows Secret Service personnel unlimited access to polling places
pursuant to the President’s direction. This is an alarming proposal which
raises the possibility that armed federal agents will be patrolling
neighborhood precincts and vote centers.
The signatory secretaries of state represent California, Washington, New
Mexico, North Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia,
Tennessee, West Virginia, Indiana, Ohio, Delaware, and all the New England
states except New Hampshire. Their letter points out that the federal
statue
the bill amends (Title 18, US Code, section 592) is intended to keep
“troops
or armed men” away from every “place where a general or special election is
held, unless such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United
States.” The secretaries’ letter argues:
This longstanding and carefully crafted statute ensures the right of voters
to cast their ballots under the limited authority of civil officers rather
than law enforcement. Secretaries of State across the country agree that
there is no discernable need for federal Secret Service agents to intrude,
at the discretion of the president, who may also be a candidate in that
election, into the thousands of citadels where democracy is enshrined.
[emphasis added]
The secretaries’ letter concludes with the “humble request” that the
senators remove the unchecked presidential authority from the legislation.
According to the secretaries, the Senate Homeland Security and Government
Affairs Committee listened to their concerns, but told them that it “did
not
have the authority to address this important issue.”
The secretaries’ March 9 letter sparked same-day coverage in the Boston
Globe that began:
President Trump would be able to dispatch Secret Service agents to polling
places nationwide during a federal election, a vast expansion of executive
authority, if a provision in a Homeland Security reauthorization bill
remains intact.
The Globe went on to quote Massachusetts secretary of state William F.
Galvin, a Democrat, castigating the proposal:
This is worthy of a Third World country…. I’m not going to tolerate people
showing up to our polling places. I would not want to have federal agents
showing up in largely Hispanic areas. The potential for mischief here is
enormous.
The Globe followed up on March 10 with Secret Service spokesperson
Catherine
Milhoan, who said that the Secret Service had sought only “clarifying
language” to allow agents to do their job. Milhoan referred to a
non-specific incident in 2016 when armed Secret Service agents were
allegedly prevented from entering a polling place. Milhoan did not explain
the blanket authority granted the president to send armed Secret Service
agents to any polling place.
Two days later, the Secret Service issued an unsigned, dishonest press
release that relied on a false premise. The Secret Service asserted:
The intent of the U.S. Secret Service is grossly mischaracterized in a
recent Boston Globe article. Our mission is apolitical as is the carrying
out of our duties. The intent of a provision in a Homeland Security
reauthorization bill is to simply allow us to protect those we are mandated
to do so under Title 18 USC 3056 when at the election polls, and not
violate
the law.
This is itself a gross mischaracterization. The Globe does not address the
“intent” of the Secret Service except insofar as that intent is expressed
by
the Secret Service’s Milhoan. No one in the Globe article accuses the
Secret
Service of trying to violate the law. The Secret Service obfuscates (or
outright lies) about its intent by failing to explain why the president
should have the power to send armed Secret Service agents to any polling
place.
Then the Secret Service sort of admits that it did, maybe, sort of seek to
violate the law, perhaps unwittingly. The press release gives a second
version of the alleged 2016 incident where election officials questioned
the
lawfulness of their behavior:
In November of 2016 leading up to Election Day, while attempting to conduct
a protective assignment at a polling location, Secret Service personnel
encountered some reluctance to our presence and the carrying of weapons.
So if this event was before election day, the Secret Service agents were at
a polling place without any protectee who was trying to vote. This
circumstance would fall outside Title 18 USC 3056 cited by the Secret
Service above. This is tantamount to an admission by the Secret Service
that
it probably was in violation of 18 USC 592, as poll workers suggested. And
still none of this explains why the Secret Service think the president
needs
the authority to send armed Secret Service agents to any polling place
anywhere.
Follow-up coverage of the letter from the secretaries of state doesn’t get
to the source of this power play. ACLU lawyer Kristen Clarke compares the
use of Secret Service agents at the polls to law enforcement “tactics that
we saw during the Jim Crow era.” She doesn’t remind us that Florida
governor
Jeb Bush used the same law enforcement intimidation tactics to suppress the
Florida vote in the 2000 election that made his brother president.
The likelihood that the presidential authority in the bill passed by the
House was created by anything but the intent to expand the power of the
presidency is almost nil. The phrase “pursuant to a Presidential
memorandum”
just isn’t the sort of thing people casually and unconsciously just toss
off. Apparently the effort to modify the law came from the Secret Service,
but they’re acting like someone else made up the language. Maybe it came
from Rep. McCaul or his co-sponsors, they haven’t said. The White House
hasn’t said anything, referring inquiries to the Secret Service. Senators
McConnell and Schumer haven’t said anything that matters, which surprises
no
one. Armed Secret Service agents at polling places, who cares?
This grant of police state authority passed the House in July without a
single House member speaking out, not then, or ever since. No senator has
yet to raise an alarm. This is all of a piece with the political
establishment’s long war on voters. The Bush voter suppression tactics of
2000 are still widespread, the Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights
Act, and Congress has done nothing to restore it. Only a minority of
Democrats show any serious care for voting rights. The result is a slow but
real coup d'état against democratic processes. There is another federal
law,
18 USC section 594 that makes intimidation, threatening, or coercion of
voters punishable by up to one year in jail. Who in the federal government
should not be incarcerated?
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America,
Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award
nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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