Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen

Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen


Armed Poll Watchers: To Protect or Intimidate?

August 25, 2020

Blurring the lines between law enforcement and vigilantism, why are off duty police at the polling stations mainly in black and brown neighborhoods? New Jersey in 1981 is a case study in what has happened and most likely will happen again. The decree that prevented recurrence of the bogus “National Ballot Security Task Forces,” which threatened certain voters, ran out in 2017. Trump’s campaign lawyer called the lack of voter protection a “huge huge deal” for a “more aggressive” election day program. On this show New Jersey’s own Mark Krasovic, associate history professor at Rutgers (in Newark) tells the important cautionary tale. There are lessons to protect our right to vote.