The Democratic National Committee filed a motion in federal court Wednesday alleging the Republican Party had violated a longstanding consent decree barring “ballot security” measures that could be used to intimidate voters.
The DNC’s legal team is asking for a federal judge to prevent any possible GOP’s “ballot security” measures, and to hold the Republican Party in contempt for allegedly violating the 1981 consent decree, which resulted from Republican officials reportedly intimidating minority voters under the guise of keeping the elections clean.
The 35-year-old consent decree specifically prohibited the “RNC from engaging in various polling-related activities,” Law News explained.
On Wednesday, the DNC maintained in its legal filing that the Republican Party – via Donald Trump and his campaign – had violated the decree.
The motion reads:
Defendant Republican National Committee (“RNC”) has violated the Final Consent Decree.. by supporting and enabling the efforts of the Republican candidate for President, Donald J. Trump, as well as his campaign and advisors, to intimidate and discourage minority voters from voting in the 2016 Presidential Election. Trump has falsely and repeatedly told his supporters that the November 8 election will be “rigged” based upon fabricated claims of voter fraud in “certain areas” or “certain sections” of key states. Unsurprisingly, those “certain areas” are exclusively communities in which large minority voting populations reside. Notwithstanding that no evidence of such fraud actually exists, Trump has encouraged his supporters to do whatever it takes to stop it—”You’ve got to get everybody to go out and watch . . . and when [I] say ‘watch,’ you know what I’m talking about, right?”—and has been actively organizing “election observers” to monitor polling stations in “certain areas.” Trump has even encouraged his “watchers” to act like vigilante law enforcement officers.
The Republican Party has sought to put space between itself and the words of Trump and his surrogates, but the DNC’s motion argued it’s not enough.
There is “ample evidence that Trump has enjoyed the direct and tacit support of the RNC in its ‘ballot security’ endeavors,” the DNC’s legal team argued.
The consent decree was slated to expire in 2017, but the DNC has asked that it be extended for an additional eight years in response to the candidacy of Donald Trump.
Memorandum of Law in Support of OTSC by Becket Adams on Scribd
