WASHINGTON _ A coalition of civil rights groups, concerned about the "weakening of the Voting Rights Act" and Donald Trump's call to supporters to challenge voters at the polls, has requested international election monitors to increase efforts to observe the U.S. elections in November.
In a letter released Tuesday, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights asked the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to consider beefing up its efforts to monitor the U.S. elections in November, and to target states that have recently imposed restrictive voting rights laws.
"A confluence of factors has made the right to vote more vulnerable to racial discrimination than at any time in recent history," the coalition wrote. The letter cited Trump's "demonization of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities" as chief among its concerns.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, an international security organization, sends election monitors at the request of member states. The U.S. government has asked the group to observe the last three presidential elections. The group has already committed to sending 500 monitors in November _ a tenfold increase from 2012.
But the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 200 U.S. civil rights groups, said even more help is needed this year.
It cited the U.S. Justice Department's announcement in July that it would deploy election observers to far fewer polling sites this year than in previous elections, and voter fraud laws passed in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, North Dakota and Texas. Both developments are tied to the Supreme Court's 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, which significantly weakened the Voting Rights Act.
Trump has called for his own supporters to observe the election, saying that otherwise it could be "rigged," and that people in "certain sections" of states like Pennsylvania could vote multiple times. Such predictions are not backed up by evidence and have been challenged by legal experts.
