[V]ermont Secretary of State Jim Condos on this week sharply criticized legislation that has passed the U.S. House and is pending in the Senate authorizing the president to send armed federal agents into polling places.
“This action is more emblematic of a totalitarian government than the democracy that I and other elected officials, including the president and members of Congress, have sworn an oath to protect,” Condos said in a statement dated Tuesday.
Condos, a Democrat in his fourth two-year term who’s now the president-elect of the National Association of Secretaries of State, joined a bipartisan group of his colleagues in calling for the “damaging and concerning provision” to be removed from the bill in which it is contained, a reauthorization for the Department of Homeland Security.
On March 9, the group wrote to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, that the provision “allows Secret Service personnel unlimited access to polling places pursuant to the President’s direction. This is an alarming proposal which raises the possibility that armed federal agents will be patrolling neighborhood precincts and vote centers.”
The state officials quoted current federal law that they said “makes it a crime for a military or civil officer in the service of the United States to bring or keep their troops ‘at any place where a general or special election is held,’ unless it is necessary to protect against an armed invasion.”
The letter added, “Secretaries of State across the country agree that there is no discernable need for federal Secret Service agents to intrude, at the discretion of the president, who may also be a candidate in that election, into the thousands of citadels where democracy is enshrined.”
U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the main sponsor of the DHS reauthorization bill, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon on why the provision in question might be necessary.
In an interview with the Boston Globe about the provision, Catherine Milhoan, a spokeswoman for the Secret Service, said the agency wanted “clarifying language” to guarantee that agents can carry out their duties in polling places.
“The only time armed Secret Service personnel would be at a polling place would be to facilitate the visiting of one of our protectees while they voted,” Milhoan said, adding that some election officers have been fearful that allowing armed agents into polling places would violate federal law.
The Department of Homeland Security issued a press release saying the Globe article, which was framed around the concerns from secretaries of state, “grossly mischaracterized” the intent of the bill.
“Our mission is apolitical as is the carrying out of our duties. The intent of a provision in a Homeland Security reauthorization bill is to simply allow us to protect those we are mandated to do so under Title 18 USC 3056 when at the election polls, and not violate the law,” it said.
President Donald Trump and some other Republicans have pointed often to fears of voter fraud, a worry rejected by most Democrats, who say a bigger concern are laws passed in recent years in some jurisdictions that they say appear aimed at suppressing votes — particularly minorities and poor populations.
Condos said this was the first proposal he had heard to put armed federal agents in polling places.
“To say I am shocked would be a severe understatement,” he said.
“Opening the door for the possibility that armed federal agents could be directed by the president to patrol polling places and voting centers is a dangerous and slippery slope, and would upend a history of carefully crafted protections which ensure that presidents cannot weaponize military or civil officers to suppress and intimidate voters at their neighborhood precincts,” Condos’ statement said.
