I hope everyone understands there will be an army of ICE goons harassing and intimidating voters at every majority Dem polling place. The effectiveness of the fascist suppression will likely be limited only by the fact that these conspiracy freaks really do think there is massive voter fraud.
Sorry but your math sucks. Your take is worse. Twitter take really.
Brownshirts patrolling for brown skin.
My brother in Christ do some damn math. Do you have any idea how many polling places that actually is? Have you penciled out how many officers you need at each location to have the effect you’re describing? Does this # track—in anyway—with the difficulty DHS is already having in finding recruits?
These people can’t even occupy LA let alone half a continent.
Thanks to 20 years of forever wars. The US military has a *lot* of occupation experience. There are well tested ratios for working the number of soldiers required to control a given number of people. That number is high, very high. Before you continue fear mongering, go find those details first.
There are more than 80,000 polling places in the USA
In round numbers, you're looking at a quarter trillion dollar deployment
That's 1400 polling places in Chicago, put 2-3 guys in each (there's 5 election judges in theory, but often just 3 show up, and I've run a polling place with just one person at least once in a midterm). 5000 troops should be enough to intimidate all of Chicago, less if you ignore the Whiter N Side.
Troops can't perform arrests, so you'd need federal police. Also, not sure what National Guard recruiting and retention is looking like right now, so it's a mistake to think you'll have the same levels 14 months from now.
If we get to the point that he's sending the military to polling places, he will have established the precedent, whatever the laws and constitution say, that regular troops *can* arrest people, if only to grab them, cuff them, and hand them over to DHS/FBI/local cops for the formal arrest.
Well, it won't be local cops in places enforcing statewide injunctions on Federal cooperation. And anyway, non-citizen voting exists nowhere outside the imagination of Fox News viewers, so the people they're theoretically "monitoring" will be anywhere but a polling place.
Of course there won't be any actual non-citizens at the polling place. But their friends, neighbors, and citizen relatives might be, so Trump wants to send goons to scare them into staying home to protect others, avoid being dragged in for questioning, or avoid being "mistakenly" sent to CECOT.
You cut the Chicago vote in half, you can probably win the race for the Senate seat currently held by the retiring Dick Durbin and swing the Senate more Republican. Dunno how much putting a couple of troops at each polling place would work, but could probably scare at least some away.
A few news stories about a new Executive Order banning Felons from voting (sitting Presidents exempt, of course) and a few more about ICE dragging suspected family members of illegals in for "questioning" from Early Voting polling places, you can probably scare away a lot of Blacks and Hispanics.
It could easily have the opposite effect
Bingo. Military-style occupation is the surest sign of (a) elections having high-stakes consequences and (b) these people knowing how little support they've maintained. And let me point it this way; jacking up prices on everything from socks to electricity while cratering Medicaid is not popular.
And I wouldn't count on Latino support to remain steady when chinga la migra is on everyone's lips
Meanwhile, this is not the time or place I'd choose to test the power of the RCC.
Ok yes, pedants. I don't mean *every single one*. Obviously I mean the most important places in battleground districts and states, to the degree to which they have manpower. But also, ICE is rapidly hiring and they will put every available body on this task.
They are really genuinely having trouble finding bodies to fill those positions. You are assigning them a competency and power that they have not earned.
They have a year and a ginormous budget to pull it off.
And they’re having trouble reaching their previous personnel targets let alone the new ones.
Glad for that. I just don’t count out the agency and its ability to raise salaries and incentives…nor the depth of the pool of MAGA wannabe ICE agents
now would be a great time to identify battleground states and districts and look at if anyone controlling them actually is going with election-day-only voting with limited locations
The logistics of this are pretty absurd. The most effective means of voter suppression is through self-enforcement (people not showing up out of fear or apathy). Basically, being a doomer is doing their job for them!
This kind of doomsaying is a form of preemptive surrender. Cut it out and focus on how we're going to fight the fascists instead of declaring that they've already won
I didnt say they've won. In fact, I mentioned they are idiots. I dont think stationing goons at polling places will secure them victory. We will persevere. But we must be prepared.
So you want to help the GOP by fearmongering. Great job...
Are you blind or just stupid?
My only solace is they don’t have the manpower.
They will.
I’m not sure. They seem to be running into recruitment issues.
All that money they receive next month will cure a lot of that, I think
For now at least the labor market is holding up well enough people aren’t going to want jobs terrorizing their neighbors. But we will see.
This anxiety induced dooming is why they have more power than they should. Don’t give them power they don’t already have and don’t just assume they’ll be able to pull it off so you can score points online. Have some fucking contempt for them.
It's not anxiety-based. Congress passed Trump's budget bill. ICE's funding gets a big boost starting September 1. They're going to push it as far as they can.
Yep. "We're here to ensure there's no voter fraud," they'll say, pointing guns at anyone with brown skin walking near a polling place. This is also a major reason why they want to get rid of vote-by-mail: harder to intimidate voters when they can drop a ballot in a mailbox or a dropbox.
Yep. Kettle everyone into polling places, then suppress the polling places
Bro they can barely field enough guys to patrol a couple blocks in a medium-sized city They’re not gonna be camped out in front of thousands of voting sites
I don’t understand why people are so skeptical about this happening. He’s doing this on immigration and no one thinks they’ll make a dent in actually deporting a large % of immigrants. Trump does this for the sheer hatred and not just the effectiveness. Why are people confused about this?
Scale, for one.
Sure but that’s like saying “Trump would never needlessly deport a single migrant multiple times and take him to all levels of our justice system. It doesn’t scale!” But he’s doing just that.
The original post is precisely about scale! An army of goons at every majority democratic polling place! It’s not “some goons at a handful.” That’s a different thing.
I interpreted him as being hyperbolic and trying to say Trump will do this at many polling places. Not saying it’s literally going to happen at every polling place. If he says otherwise, then my mistake.
I was doing him the courtesy of listening to the words he said.
it's increasingly easy for them to believe everyone agrees with them, because most of the ethical, articulate, anti-Trump people (ie. us) did the ethical thing and left twitter/X. They see a lot less leftism and centrism there to affect that view of US voters.
“Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time.”
STFU
Notice all the idiots rushing on here to say this would never happen here because...gee, I wonder what their agenda is?
I'm concerned the real vulnerability is harassment of election officials and breaking or grabbing ballots, machines, etc
Right? He doesn't need to cover 100,000 precincts in November if he has two dozen goon squads shut down the big blue county election boards in October.
Cmon, 2026 predictions? Its Monday.
Considering that it's illegal for law enforcement to be within 100 feet of a polling place in my state, I doubt they'll be there for long.
Its illegal. How quaint.
What's the budget and the goon head count for that op?
You suck at math
There are 1,703 polling places in Philadelphia alone. Currently, the *entirety of ICE* could station 12 agents at each location. I think you underestimate the backlash such a hamfisted attempt to frighten US citizens from the polls would be created.
To those saying there aren't enough ICE to cover all/most polling places. There could be "flying" squads. Moving from a polling place to another and another. Maybe 50 on election day. They don't have to be standing at one place throughout the day. The fear / deterrent will be there anyway.