Democratic strategist Michael Hardaway railed into the Trump administration Saturday over its plan to deploy Justice Department officials to monitor elections in California and New Jersey, calling it blatant “voter intimidation.”
“To my view, this voter suppression is problematic,” Hardaway said, appearing on MSNBC’s “Alex Witt Reports.”
President Donald Trump announced Friday that DOJ officials would be sent to several polling sites in both California and New Jersey ahead of the Nov. 4 election, and did so at the behest of Republican Party leadership in both states.
“I think Republicans love voter suppression. Now, there's a little bit of hyperbole there, but my point is they seem to be interested enough [in] targeting heavily-Hispanic areas, which seems to be voter intimidation in some way,” Hardaway said.
“There's been no evidence put forth that this is necessary. It's my understanding that the Republican Party in each state has asked for this to happen, but they failed to actually put forth evidence showing that this was necessary.”
In California, which will have its redistricting measure on the ballot this November, GOP chairwoman Corrin Rankin cited “reports of irregularities” in recent elections as her reasoning for requesting federal monitoring from the Trump administration, despite there being no evidence of system voter fraud in the state.
The New Jersey GOP voiced similar concerns, and in spite of the New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin, whose spokesperson said that it would be “highly inappropriate for the federal government to interfere in this November’s state election.”