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WASHINGTON (AP) – A veteran Republican operative who got his start in politics by helping persuade a judge to cast hundreds of mail-in ballots is organizing an “army” of volunteers for President Donald Trump’s campaign to monitor voting in the democrats. areas on Tuesday.
Mike Roman, Trump’s Director of Election Day Operations, is a former Pennsylvania White House aide who collected claims in 1993 of voter fraud, resulting in a court ruling that overturned the election results and got him your candidate will sit in the Pennsylvania State Senate.
It’s a strategy that Trump has been advocating on Twitter and on the stump.
For months, the president has been trying to undermine the validity of vote-by-mail ballots, a long-used voting method that increased this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past week, Trump has also suggested that any tabulated vote after Election Day is suspicious, even as his campaign has opposed plans by election officials to begin counting mail ballots early.
Roman, who previously ran the secret internal intelligence unit of the political network led by Republican mega-donors Charles and David Koch, has organized what the campaign claims are 50,000 election observers. Many of them registered through an “Army For Trump” website that asks its followers to “enlist” in its fight for re-election. The campaign has also hired full-time staff in at least 11 battle states to organize the effort, several of them young lawyers.
“Our Election Day operations are designed to ensure that everyone who is legally entitled to vote has the opportunity to vote, once,” says Erin Perrine, director of press communications for Trump 2020, in a video intended to recruit volunteers. “We all know that the Democrats will do their old dirty tricks on Election Day to make sure that President Trump doesn’t win. We cannot allow that to happen. “
The Trump campaign portrays its election day operations effort as a traditional election observation carried out for a long time by both sides. But Democrats and some Republicans who have followed Roman’s political career are concerned that the Trump team is more interested in casting doubt on the vote than in safeguarding it.
“Mike Roman has made many unsubstantiated allegations of fraud and manipulation, he has a history and general reputation as someone who turns things upside down, so his presence on any Election Day topic gives me pause,” said Rick Hasen, professor of law at the University. from California, Irvine, who is studying electoral law.
Trump 2020 spokeswoman Thea McDonald called such claims “ridiculous.” She said the campaign’s “rule-keeping election watchers” are simply trying to “guarantee a fair election.”
Both campaigns have focused on Pennsylvania as the battlefield state that could decide the elections. Speaking about the state of Keystone on Sunday, Trump said that when election night is over, “we will go to our attorneys.”
“I don’t think it’s fair that we have to wait too long,” Trump said. “They should have put in their ballots.”
Roman, who declined to comment for this story, has experience doing what Trump describes.
He got his political start running ballot security operations in Philadelphia for Republican Bruce Marks, who ran for the Pennsylvania State Senate in 1993 and narrowly lost to his Democratic opponent.
As Roman and Marks put it in a June blog post on the Marks website, control of the Pennsylvania State Senate turned against the race and “operatives of the Democratic machine descended on the District to steal the elections.” . Later, his legal team convinced a federal judge that there were so many irregular ballots in Latino neighborhoods that he threw out hundreds of ballots, overturned the result, and sent Marks to a state Senate seat.
Marks, who made his legal career representing wealthy clients from Ukraine and Russia and briefly championed the Trump campaign in 2016, said Roman’s working-class background gave him an innate understanding of ballot box politics.
“He’s not an ivy player in a bow tie, he learned what it’s like to be exposed to elections and face voter fraud on the street,” Marks said, adding that Roman grew up in a townhouse. “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 caused a sensation by promoting a video of two members of the New Black Panther Party standing outside a polling place in Philadelphia, one of them holding a billy club. Although there was no violence, the video was nationally touted by those on the right as evidence of intimidation by Democratic voters, while those on the left criticized it as an attempt to stoke racial divisions during the election of the first black president. of the nation, Barack Obama.
The New Black Panther video raised Roman’s profile within the Republican Party, and he soon landed a job at the Koch network investigating Democrats, environmental activists and others on the left. A 2014 tax return for Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce Inc., supported by Koch, lists Roman’s title as vice president of research and says he was paid more than $ 285,000 in annual salary and benefits.
In 2016, the Kochs disbanded the intelligence unit and Roman went to work for the Trump campaign organizing election observation operations. After Trump won, Roman landed a job in the office of then-White House attorney Don McGahn as director of special projects and research, though it’s not immediately clear what his duties were.
Roman left the White House in 2018 and soon returned to the Trump campaign. There he has led an aggressive effort that has not waited for Election Day to begin challenging the voting process.
In Pennsylvania last month, a Trump campaign attorney sent surveillance photos of three voters who appeared to be depositing more than one ballot in a polling box. Under state law, voters must return their own ballots unless they are disabled or unable to do so on their own. However, election officials said the Trump campaign did not produce enough evidence to show that the voters in the photos were breaking the law.
The Pennsylvania complaint appears to be part of a broader national strategy by Trump and his allies to raise allegations of voter fraud and challenge ballots in areas with high rates of registered Democrats.
In Texas, Republicans sought to cast nearly 127,000 votes cast from self-service lanes in the Democratic stronghold of Harris County, which includes Houston. Both the Republican Party-dominated Supreme Court of Texas and a federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush rejected claims that direct voting is illegal.
And some Democrats and election observers are also concerned that Trump’s allies may try to intimidate voters heading to the polls.
In Minnesota last week, the head of the Minneapolis police union sent an email to members seeking between 20 and 30 retired officers to help serve as “election challengers” on the precincts of the “problem” areas of the city. The message was signed by William Willingham, whose email signature identified him as Senior Legal Counsel and State Director of Election Day Operations for the Trump campaign.
“Poll Challengers do not ‘stop’ people, per se, but act as our eyes and ears on the field and call our hotline to document fraud,” read the email, a copy of which was obtained by Minneapolis. Star Tribune. “We don’t necessarily want our Poll Challengers to look intimidating, they can’t carry a gun at the polls due to state law. … We only want people who are not afraid in difficult neighborhoods or intimidating situations. “
Later, the Trump campaign tried to distance itself from the request for retired police officers, but the email reinforced fears among advocates of the right to vote that the Trump campaign could revive old voter suppression tactics.
In 1981, the Democratic Party sued the Republican Party after a disputed state election in New Jersey, where Republican Party officials hired off-duty police officers to patrol Black and Latino neighborhoods wearing armbands that read ” national ballot security “. Without admitting any wrongdoing, the Republican Party accepted a national consent decree the following year to renounce such tactics. However, at the behest of the Republican Party, a federal judge allowed that agreement to expire in 2017.
In August, Trump himself suggested that his campaign could send law enforcement officials to polling places.
“We’re going to have sheriffs, and we’re going to have law enforcement, and we’re going to have, hopefully, US prosecutors, and we’re going to have everyone and attorneys general,” Trump said during an interview. with Sean Hannity on Fox News.
Federal law prohibits intimidation at the polls and makes it illegal for any federal official to order “troops or armed men” to polling places, unless it is necessary to “repel armed enemies of the United States.” But such remarks by the president have fueled concern among advocates of the right to vote that some Trump supporters may take responsibility for showing up outside the polls in military-style gear, brandishing semi-automatic weapons.
Reed Galen, a veteran political consultant who worked for John McCain’s presidential nomination before leaving the Republican Party after Trump’s nomination, said he was concerned about Roman’s involvement in Trump’s Election Day Operations after Trump. learn about your reputation as a local agent in Philadelphia.
“Here you have the Army for Trump that could be official, signing people up through the text messaging mechanism, but there could be tens of thousands of people taking their own initiative” and it can get violent, Galen said.
“This is what this guy does and it’s bad news,” he said.
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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 global research team at [email protected]
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