Civil rights groups deploy poll watchers to counter alleged election interference threats

A coalition of civil rights groups are planning to deploy hundreds of poll watchers in several key states to combat alleged threats of election interference and voter intimidation from Donald Trump’s administration and his MAGA allies.

The “Vote Safe” program from the Save America Movement — joined by the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and the American Federation of Teachers union — will dispatch clergy members, veterans and community leaders to the polls in Georgia, Michigan, Ohio and North Carolina, where organizers fear the potential presence of federal law enforcement officers or National Guard troops could impact turnout.

“Black Americans have faced intimidation at the ballot box for generations, and we did not march, bleed and die for the right to vote only to see fear used as a weapon against us again,” Sharpton said in a statement announcing the effort on Wednesday.

“No voter should have to wonder whether exercising their constitutional right will put them at risk,” he added. “If anyone thinks the presence or threat of federal agents will frighten our communities away from the polls, they are badly mistaken.”

Vote Safe is training hundreds of volunteers on de-escalation tactics as well as voter ID laws and other policies for each state and precinct where they will be stationed during upcoming midterm elections. They’ll be installed at precincts across Atlanta, Charlotte, Cleveland and Detroit — cities with large populations of racial-minority voters.

“Their role is not to confront: it is to bear witness, answer questions, and make sure voters know their rights in real time — so no one in those precincts stands at the ballot box alone,” according to the Save America Movement.

Trump has run into several critical legal and political roadblocks in his efforts to centralize control of election administration and has not ruled out declaring a national emergency to do so.

The Department of Justice has lost more than 20 court cases in its attempts to collect sensitive voter data, and Congress is reluctant to pass his SAVE America Act to overhaul election administration within the final weeks before midterms.

Trump has not dismissed the idea of declaring a national security emergency in an attempt to unilaterally enforce his agenda. During Trump’s recent appearance on Real America’s Voice, host Wayne Allyn Root suggested the president should declare an emergency to enforce his proposed voter ID measures and other charges without congressional approval.

“Let me just say that stranger things have happened, OK,” Trump replied. “I’ll leave it at that.”

Voting rights advocates and Democratic officials have also feared that the president could threaten to use federalized troops or law enforcement to seize voting equipment or ballots, which would disrupt ballot collection and vote-tallying in his crusade against alleged fraud.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Tuesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents would not necessarily be patrolling polling locations but could be present if they are serving a warrant or responding to a threat.

Now-former White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said earlier this year that she “can’t guarantee that an ICE agent won’t be around a polling location in November” but said the president has not weighed plans to do so.

Former Trump aide Steve Bannon, meanwhile, has suggested that the recent surge of ICE agents in airports could serve as a “test run” for elections, and he has claimed that officers will “surround the polls” come November.

Chairman of Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine has said the U.S. military “has no plans to send Federal military personnel or Federalized members of the National Guard to polling places during the 2026 elections.”

“Likewise, the Joint Force has no plans to use such personnel to seize ballots, voting machines, or other election-related material,” he wrote in a recent letter to Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin.

“I have neither received nor anticipate receiving any unlawful order concerning the role of the Joint Force in the upcoming November 2026 midterm elections,” he added.

Still, the Department of Justice intends to deploy 1,000 monitors to the polls this year, and the agency’s civil rights chief Harmeet Dhillon has encouraged “private parties and the political parties” to join them. “The more eyes on elections” the better, she said in July.

A recently revealed bombshell memo from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the General Counsel has also drawn speculation that the administration has been testing a legal theory to deploy National Guard members to perform immigration enforcement at the polls.

“With a consequential election approaching, this memo should alarm every American,” Chioma Chukwu, executive director of nonprofit watchdog group American Oversight, which obtained the memo, said in a statement.

“Combined with the administration’s escalating claims about noncitizen voting, this theory could be used to put military forces near polling places under the guise of immigration enforcement,” Chukwu said. “The stakes extend well beyond immigration: This memo gives the president a ready-made workaround for using military power at home whenever the administration decides its agenda demands it.”

Voting rights groups fear that the president’s refusal to shut down speculation while amplifying his baseless narrative of “stolen” and “rigged” elections is further eroding trust in the voting process and the people who run the nation’s elections.

“The right to vote isn't a Democratic idea or a Republican idea — it's the idea this country was built on,” said Mary Corcoran, co-founder and executive director of the Save America Movement..

“When you've got clergy, veterans, and organizers from every side of the aisle standing at the same precinct for the same reason, you realize access to the ballot is bigger than one party,” she said Wednesday.

The Vote Safe program is intended to give voters “confidence and the reassurance of knowing their local community has their back,” she said.

The program will run through the early voting periods in each state through Election Day on November 3.