Fears of voters intimidation heightened following Trump's call for 'volunteer election observers'

In the dying days of the segregation era in 1962, a group of Republican party lawyers, including the future chief justice of the supreme court William Rehnquist, descended on a crowded polling precinct in Phoenix, Arizona, and challenged waiting black and Latino voters to read out sections of the US constitution to prove their bona fides as citizens.

The Republicans called this Operation Eagle Eye and claimed, much as Donald Trump’s supporters do now, that the risk of fraudulent voting was so great that only extra vigilance could protect polling stations from mischief. The upshot, though, was simply to deter legitimate voters, many of whom left rather than endure what they saw as bullying and humiliation by confident white men in suits.

When Democratic party poll watchers objected, a scuffle broke out. Eventually, Rehnquist and his colleagues were asked to leave, and the practice of challenging individual voters – a relic of the Jim Crow-era south – was soon outlawed in Arizona and many other states.

With the Trump campaign now predicting the election will be rigged by Hillary Clinton, voting rights activists are once again alarmed by calls from the Republican’s campaign for 

so-called “volunteer election observers”.

Many voting rights activists worry, however, that just calling for a volunteer army of observers may have a chilling effect on turnout, especially among minority voters. They worry, too, about the toxic political atmosphere that Trump’s rhetoric is creating.

“There is no place for harassment of voters in American democracy,” a group of more than 60 activist groups spearheaded by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law wrote in an open letter to all the major political parties. “Unsubstantiated predictions of voter fraud and rigged elections, coupled with the demagogic rhetoric of the last few months towards minority communities, constitute an unacceptable targeting of those members of our society most vulnerable to disenfranchisement.”

Read more here..https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/18/donald-trump