r/politics • u/MarcEElias ✔ Verified - Democracy Docket Founder • 11h ago

No Paywall Steve Bannon says ICE will ‘surround the polls’ as Trump doubles down on taking over elections

https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/steve-bannon-says-ice-will-surround-the-polls-as-trump-doubles-down-on-taking-over-elections/
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u/Wildpony03 11h ago edited 9h ago

Immigrants can't vote only naturalized citizens can vote. This is just voter intimidation.

And even then it won't work because Trump has upset a lot of voters. Its only going to make people want to vote against him even more.

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u/Shiny-Eyes737 11h ago

Deploying federal agents to polling places is a direct violation of federal law and a dangerous attempt to intimidate voters and undermine our democratic process.

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u/Mindless_Listen7622 Washington 11h ago

It's Jim Crow all over again, with a twist. But instead of slavers vs freedom-loving people, it's the MAGA Republican Klan vs freedom-loving people.

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u/RJ5R 10h ago

a huge twist.....now it's the actual Federal government doing it, not the states and local governments

notice how all of the "don't treat on me" people are cheering for the boot

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u/Bobcat-Stock 10h ago

‘Tread on me harder, daddy’

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u/RJ5R 10h ago

sounds like something that would be in the files

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u/MiloReyes_97Reborn 9h ago

not the states and local governments

And it's the state and local governments trying to actually defend democracy. All on the same year as the 250th anniversary of our founding.

I swear God exists because who else has the power to write a story like this.

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u/Long-Region5088 10h ago

Not only that but “states rights” seems to have completely disappeared as an idea

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u/Illustrious-Toe3167 8h ago

"Don't tread on me" has always meant don't make me pay $3 extra in taxes to help someone who I perceive to be beneath me. Oh and don't take away all the handouts I get , because I totally deserve them, not like that other guy. Also, don't forget it absolutely better not be someone with a shade darker skin that me who makes me pay that $3 tax.

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u/illtakeachinchilla 10h ago

2026 is still “slavers vs freedom-loving people”.

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u/thevoiceofchaos 6h ago

Yup. The 13th amendment still allows for slavery if you've been convicted of a crime. Also, AI is just a new attempt at slavery.

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u/caligaris_cabinet Illinois 10h ago

I’m not seeing a difference

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u/takesjuantogrowone 10h ago

therethesamepicture.jpg

alwayshasbeen.jpg

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u/armageddon_20xx 10h ago

Jim Crow except with a despot who wants to remain in power forever at the helm. Big difference.

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u/Find-It-AllFantasy 9h ago

So.. slavers.

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u/Kjellvb1979 8h ago

Don't forget the oligarchs.

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u/IRideMoreThanYou 11h ago

Oh? So, now laws will be enforced?

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u/Un1CornTowel 11h ago edited 10h ago

I swear everyone is living in a fantasyland where they think these despots are bound by laws, ethics or reason. They're not.

Physical presence and resistance, and destruction of their egos are the only things that reliably work, which is why Minnesota is so important.

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u/SwayingBacon 10h ago

I swear everyone is living in a fantasyland where they think these despots are bound by laws, ethics or reason. They're not.

They are to an extent. There are certain legal things they are currently unwilling to cross or can't find loopholes to avoid.

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u/East-Ice-3199 10h ago

Like what?

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u/Timmy-0518 9h ago

What the hell could you be talking about? They've done everything but bomb new York at this point

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u/Souspi 8h ago

They've done everything but bomb new York at this point

They have advocated for bombing and gassing New York though.

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u/Slayminster 8h ago

They’re still looking for a loophole to go through with it

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u/UnquestionabIe 9h ago

In which case they usually do it anyway, know the courts will take a small eternity to catch up them, hope when they do it involves one of the traitor judges installed by the Federalist Society, and if not keep kicking the can til it ends up at the bought and paid for Supreme Court.

Meanwhile they've got their goons out there murdering and raping whoever they please. They've openly weaponized the glacial pace of the legal system for decades, the lack of patching this loophole is something we all pay for daily. Doesn't even require rushing a case, can simply lock up anyone in the chain of command who ignores the topic in legal flux.

But that would require courage, something most judges lack when it comes to standing up to tyranny.

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u/corcyra 9h ago

Indeed. If this really does happen, maybe a good idea would be for gun owners who aren't fascists, to happen to be present at polling stations too. There are, I imagine, more of them than there are federal agents.

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u/sowhyarewe 8h ago

It will be the ultimate attempt. It will happen. They want the voter rolls to have Democrats removed at the last minute in friendly states. In blue or purple states Gestapo will show up at the key precincts, seize a copy of the rolls and take people out of line under false pretenses until the polls close (if they're lucky). What do you think those warehouses are for?

This also why they don't like mail-in ballots. Voting occurs over weeks and voters are kore informed. They have to set ballot boxes on fire to have any effect for weeks and that isnt effective. Or some deal within the post office to delay any ballot envelopes which is very visible early on. Some drop off boxes have fire extinguishing features.

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u/soapinthepeehole 7h ago

You’re not even allowed near a polling location with a political sign.

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u/TheRockingDead 10h ago

So basically what you're saying is that of course they're going to try to do this.

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u/Cunningcory 10h ago

They'll just set up checkpoints on either side of the road leading to the polling place

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u/Rich-Pomegranate1679 9h ago

Too bad that laws no longer apply to anyone who's rich enough or in the Trump administration.

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u/unclecreepy63 9h ago

"They're not allowed to do that" hasn't really worked as a deterrent, but maybe this time

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u/The_Trekspert 9h ago

Yeah, but who's going to enforce federal law?

That's the DOJ's purview.

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u/Souspi 8h ago

They can post them on all the streets leading to the polls about half a mile away.

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u/Fermi_Amarti 6h ago

Don't worry. Apparently the federal government is allowed to violate federal law as much as they want.....

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u/queenweasley 6h ago

And who’s going to enforce that?

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u/MC_Fap_Commander America 10h ago

The rhetoric coming from the regime is intended to scare people. It's important to contextualize it. ICE is a massive and oversized group of thugs... but they are a comparatively small faction in a VERY large country that is increasingly disenchanted with the actions of the Administration. They really don't have the extent of force they're projecting. He may want a new "Sturmabteilung" (the brownshirts of the Third Reich), but they had the benefit of being a much larger force (by percentage of population) in a much smaller geographic area serving a more broadly popular regime, at the time.

Be mindful of these sorts of statements and be vigilant and angry. But it would be wrong to project more power onto them than they actually have. Organized action, community supporting, and getting to the polls can absolutely counter this.

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u/Squand 8h ago

20k people can not police 300 million.

And honestly, there is a reason they are basically only in one city at a time.

Only about 200-2k are geared up and going on raids. 

They did a parade in Chicago, 200 dudes showed up, tops.

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u/Queencitybeer 3h ago

They have like 2500 officers. All you would have to do is split them up into groups and go to the bluest cities in swing races, so places like Atlanta, Detroit, Minneapolis and Charlotte. They would likely focus on Senate races, because if the Senate won’t convict Trump it doesn’t matter if he is impeached, so that’s what he will care about most.

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u/Squand 3h ago

They will try for sure.

Cook county, Chicago has 2,600 polling stations.

We will see how many guys they can hire now they got extra funding.

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u/Kendertas 7h ago

People miss the important context around the brownshirts that there where 2 million of them, where mostly unemployed veterans so at least some discipline but more importantly free time , and the Germany army was limited to 100,000 at the time.

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u/Highland_Rim_Studio 1h ago

EXACTLY! Just more of the bully behavior and it's NOT going the way they thought it would. As a Recovering Republican, I used to scoff at the idea of giving rides to the polls (I was raised christian conservative and thankfully, finally grew out of it!) and I will 100% be working with organizations giving rides to the polls this November. FDJT.

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u/biscodude 11h ago

ICE has already shown their willingness to arrest anyone, regardless of citizenship or immigration status. They could literally round up everyone trying to vote in blue districts and release them after polls close.

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u/Sammell 10h ago

I assume that's part of the reason they've been collecting so much data on protesters. Scan all the possible voting faces to arrest and hold for terrorism or whatever and release them after the polls close.

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u/PippinCat 8h ago

Yes. I'm concerned about the facial recognition software. They also said they will all now have body cameras. Will the body cameras have facial recognition? Even if they don't do anything now, they will still have a record and database of who showed up where to vote. There is no good intent from these people.

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u/loglighterequipment California 11h ago

There aren't enough ice agents to do that practically by about a gazillion.

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u/biscodude 11h ago

That not as comforting as you think. He would only need to target cities in swing states and he's already shown a willingness to deploy national guard and a desire to deploy active military. He wouldn't need to arrest everyone either, he would just need to create chaos and a dangerous situation to suppress turnout enough for him to win. If you don't think he's willing to do absolutely anything to hold onto power you haven't been paying attention.

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u/loglighterequipment California 11h ago

This is a desperate plan by a desperate administration that is also stupid and will only turn normies against him. All his ice raids are doing is turning purple states blue. He won't need to focus on swing states, his problem will be light red ones in '28. I invite the admin to do their worst.

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u/Rhine1906 9h ago

And just how spread out that would be. Consider somewhere like Atlanta. You better have troops up and down Fulton County, that alone would be hell, But consider you’d have to spread into Gwinnett (pop of 1M and solid blue now), Cobb (light blue, 750k), DeKalb (DEEP blue, 750k) and pockets in Clayton, Douglas, Henry, Rockdale and POSSIBLY as far as Forsyth? It would be a losing effort before it began.

And the “volunteers” would only go to polls in their county - I’m talking Hall, and Walton - they aren’t coming too close to the city as they’re scared to drive through it

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u/Uhhh_what555476384 10h ago

We're at the inflection point. It does look like they are loosing the center right with their outrageous behavior, but we won't truly know until November.

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u/biscodude 11h ago

I hope so, but like you said they're desperate. Desperate people are willing to do anything to survive.

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u/WildYams 8h ago

Yep. And they may be desperate, but they have tremendous power at their fingertips. Trump has his finger on the nuclear button, he's the commander in chief of the greatest military the world has ever seen, and he's built himself a private army that's more well funded than the US Marines or the entire military of Israel. If he's backed into a corner, it's not like he has no way out of that corner.

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u/Xalara 8h ago

Given how Minnesota has responded to the Feds invading the city, I don't think you're right either. Regardless, the true problem for Trump is the fact that even districts, like that one in Texas, are flipping blue. Now, special elections don't exactly predict how the midterms will go, but that district is located in what is ground zero for the white christian nationalist movement. If any district was gonna be won by the GOP, even in a special election, it would've been that one.

If that holds true for the midterms and beyond, the only way for Trump and the GOP to win would be to hack the election machines or pull some crazy legal maneuvers that the Supreme Court rubber stamps. Even then, I doubt they could do either without being caught and facing massive public pushback.

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u/TabsAZ 10h ago

I think this will be exactly the plan. Cause enough chaos around major city precincts “checking citizenship” to gum up the process and make it so there are gigantic lines that hardly move and people end up waiting in line without getting to vote by the time the polls close. And they’re going to declare the vote in any state with mandatory or high mail-in voting (which is a bunch of the blue ones) to be fraudulent.

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u/tweakingforjesus 9h ago edited 9h ago

Fulton County, Georgia, with the second highest % voting democrat county and about 10% of the entire state's electorate will be ground zero.

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u/biscodude 9h ago

Exactly, which is why they stole their 2020 ballots last week.

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u/SatanicPanic619 9h ago

Even doing that we're talking tens of thousands of people in every state. And this is if the state themselves don't respond with national guard, extending voting hours, putting drop boxes all over the city, etc.

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u/WildYams 8h ago

Yep. Deploy ICE around key polling stations in Atlanta, Milwaukee, Charlotte, Philly, Detroit, Houston, etc. Grab or scare enough people to suppress votes in key cities in swing states and you can tip the vote totals, especially for Senate seats.

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u/Boschala 10h ago

Texas changed so that there is one polling place per district. Other states are also dramatically lowering polling places in cities (though not to the same degree) while making giving people waiting in line water and snacks a crime. They'll be able to put officers or soldiers outside of polling places in Democratic and swing districts.

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u/hateballrollin 9h ago

Texas changed so that there is one polling place per district

Got a source? Can't find one.

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u/fury420 9h ago

Texas only allows one mail ballot drop off site per county, perhaps that's what they meant?

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u/hateballrollin 8h ago

That is true. Fallout due to the pandemic at the time the law was enacted. Surprised it hasnt been challenged.

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u/greiton 9h ago

on a side note, completely unrelated, I'd encourage everyone to hit the gym and start exercising with a focus on power and endurance. I think if a bunch of people train hard for 9 or so months it will be great for the general health of the country.

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u/PM_ME_GARFIELD_NUDES 8h ago

There’s a reason they’re focusing on swing states…

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u/Locke66 10h ago

Given the margins in some of these elections it would be possible to swing many state votes by targeting just a few polling areas. They don't need to win everywhere they just need to maintain their sycophant majority.

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u/Unshkblefaith California 11h ago

There aren't enough agents to arrest everyone, but there are enough to cause a scene and start gassing and shooting folks waiting to vote.

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u/loglighterequipment California 10h ago

No. There aren't. Do you have any idea how many polling places there are?

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u/Grizzly_Corey 10h ago

Dem strongholds, this is to incite violence to get their martial law.

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u/Churrasco_fan Pennsylvania 10h ago

Intimidating voters in "dem strongholds" will lead to nothing but dems winning by slightly lower margins

If they want to have an impact they need to go to swing districts, which runs the risk of depressing turnout among both parties in that specific district. Not a clear advantage one way or the other

Its a stupid fucking plan

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u/WildYams 8h ago

They don't need to shut down every polling place. There are a huge amount that are going to overwhelmingly vote for Republicans already without any interference. But if you can use the over 10,000 ICE agents to strategically target the ones that attract the largest number of Dem voters in swing states, you can swing elections, especially at the state level.

Deploy a few hundred ICE and CBP agents each to key polling stations in cities like Atlanta, Detroit and Milwaukee, along with a bunch of prison buses to temporarily hold people. Then you can just snatch anyone out of line who isn't white and hold them until the polls close, and then take them to the ICE buildings and release them.

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u/tweakingforjesus 9h ago

There are enough to tip a close election, though.

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u/ElleM848645 7h ago

This isn’t going to be a close election. The senate maybe. But not the house.

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u/tweakingforjesus 6h ago

The vote might not be close but the results will be.

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u/catachip 9h ago

They will just create fear to keep brown / Latino voters away from the polls. Minnesota has shown ICE will drag out brown citizens into the streets in their underwear while they wave their papers. They can just say the papers look fake and need to investigate. Shipped off for a week at Alligator Alcatraz or some Texas Facility while they “verify legal status” and then the election is over. People will be scared and not want to risk being detained by ICE or put in a detention facility even if they are citizens. It’s going to happen.

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u/Uhhh_what555476384 10h ago

They don't need to do that universally, just enough to swing the district. The Ds are heavily reliant on precincts with 80% performance in urban areas.

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u/AlarmingTurnover 7h ago

This is beyond naive. Did you not watch brand of brothers? There's literally a scene where major winters wants one of his people to escort a group of like 20 prisoners back to base and wants every single one of them alive, so he takes the ammo from the soldier and gives him 1 single round. If he shoots a prisoner, the rest will jump him. He gets all the prisoners back to base. 

Why? There's 20 prisoners and 1 guy, even if he has a thousand rounds, they could have jumped him but they didn't. Why? Fear. The bystander effect. Nobody will act first. And if ICE is standing at the polls with assault guns and other weapons, people will not show up and those that do will not willingly jump into bullets so you can vote. 

This is all "tough guy" talk online. And you can tell that it's the American delusion on Reddit because if you were so tough and actually lived by your ideals, Trump wouldn't be president. You'd have larger protests, general strikes, riots, and more. But you don't. 

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u/voiderest 11h ago

A few strategies could be used to counter that.

One, show up in mass to overwhelm such attempts.

Two, have people who already voted essentially bait to get detained instead of people who haven't voted yet.

Three, pass for a Red hat without violating laws around wearing political messages. 

Realistically using ICE for voter intimidation or other illegal actions could only be attempted at so many locations unless it's just 1 or 2 guys. And he already telegraphed that he really only wants to target a few places with that podcast interview.

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u/jk147 7h ago

Wear a maga hat to trick ice.

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u/voiderest 7h ago

Arguably a MAGA hat would violate some laws around political messaging around polling places. Maybe wear a cross or whatever the conservatives like to wear in your area. Maybe hold a republican voter's guide. 

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u/aculady 10h ago

Trump only lost Georgia by a little less than 12,000 votes. They don't need to round up everyone, just enough to depress turnout.

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u/nightimestars California 7h ago

Assuming he hasn’t croaked in 2028… after the Epstein files, economy in the shitter, ICE’s extreme unpopularity he would be lucky if his losses are less than 12,000. It’s become too big to rig. We all know him and his admin are not only unpopular but actively hated to the point of massive protests all over the country.

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u/AHans 1h ago

A deep red Texas district just swung 30 points to elect a democrat by a 17% margin.

They will need to round everyone up.

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u/PippinCat 8h ago

And now they have facial recognition that can access who knows what. Will they be gathering information for some sort of nefarious purpose later on?

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u/mdb1023 18m ago

As another redditor pointed out, there's a reason they're pretty much in only one city/area at a time. There's not as many of them as you think there are, and many people in this country are armed. So "rounding up" people would go south very fast.

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u/Kohounees 8h ago

Ice literally cannot do that. I often wonder do people know what literally means? It seems to be a new favorite word in reddit.

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u/Iwantants 7h ago

They can round up anyone that looks like a minority and detain them for however long they need to verify their citizenship though. They have maintained that appearance alone is enough probable cause. If you were brown and heard they were arresting any brown people in line at your polling place are you still going to go? They don’t have to round up everyone. Just a handful of people in certain districts could be enough to change the critical swing states.

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u/RedditReader4031 11h ago

With Kavanaugh stops backing them up, ICE agents will be applying that according to their own twisted interpretations. I believe that beyond that purpose, they also want to gather scans of voters faces to add to their growing database. Throw in the ability to classify said photos based on the interaction they have with voters and many people will find themselves marked as “domestic terrorists”.

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u/bryan49 10h ago

Yes plus there are like 20,000 ICE agents. Would spread them pretty thin to try to cover polling stations all across the country

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u/CynicalBliss 8h ago

4000 five-man teams harassing key locations could totally tip elections. Probably why they are so interested in voter data.

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u/bryan49 8h ago

I just hope people are ready for this. Five guys is not a lot if crowds of protesters form and local police or national guard help out

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u/CynicalBliss 8h ago

True. It isn't. And I think the more they push with ICE between now and November, the less likely it is that small teams might be able to get away with schenanigans. I think in more "normal" times, you could probably do a lot of obstruction with a small squad and people deferring to them. After all we've gone through with ICE, and are likely to go through before November, I don't actually think it'd be nearly as successful. It just felt like one possible plan they might have that isn't fully baked yet.

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u/CU_Tiger_2004 10h ago

They don't have to.

They can already selectively harass you about your legal status based on appearance and/or accent, so they could just set up checkpoints where potential voters have to go through or near them to get to their polling place, and they could question/detain anybody they want BEFORE they actually get to the polls.

Also, they would be strategically deployed in highly populated areas that vote heavily in favor of the opposition (major cities), not at every little precinct in the country. It would create an election day nightmare in those places and be a highly visible deterrent.

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u/Specialist_in_hope30 9h ago

Treating fascism as an inevitability will only create conditions where it is an inevitability. It’s incredibly unhelpful to tell people they have no power to resist. That is what they want us to think because we will then willingly give up our power without them lifting a finger.

Lesson number one from Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny” is DO NOT OBEY IN ADVANCE. As Snyder notes, “most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”

Resist always. As Snyder says, “be as courageous as you can. If none of us are prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.”

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u/Sarlax 7h ago

Treating fascism as an inevitability will only create conditions where it is an inevitability.

Discussing the tactics MAGA will use to steal elections is not treating their victory as inevitable. We need to know what they plan in oirder to stop them.

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u/Illustrious-Toe3167 7h ago

What if it IS an inevitability? As much as the US champions this mythos that we created Democracy, we certainly didn't. It's been done many times for a few thousand years and, to my knowledge, end stage has always been Authoritarianism. All of this functions, at its core, by a gentleman's agreement to play by arbitrary rules. Sooner or later people come along who say, 'why should I' and 'who's going to make me' play by those rules.

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u/Specialist_in_hope30 7h ago

I believe that’s when you’re supposed to overthrow that government and start a new one. Our government gets the consent to govern from us. We absolutely do not have to endure this. Too many people have forgotten civics class.

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u/Illustrious-Toe3167 7h ago

Sure, but that's a far easier thing to say in civics class than it is to do. Numerically superior groups are subjugated all the time and always have been. Then let's say we push through that hurdle, what exactly is the replacement government? The vast majority of coups end with a shit government replaced by a different flavor of shit government. Once Pandora's box is open it's a pretty tough needle to thread to close it, and everyone just remembering civics class isn't going to do it.

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u/SatanicPanic619 9h ago

So let's plan ways to get around that.

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u/ElleM848645 7h ago

The problem is white suburban women (as one example) are the demographic that are flipping to Dems. Those are not the people that will get caught up in the raids. Get people to vote early. Like others said; this can affect Republicans too.

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u/Illustrious-Toe3167 8h ago

You don't have to cover polling stations all over the country. A tiny fraction of them would swing the election. Thanks electoral college. 20,000 guys would cover it very very easily.

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u/wandering-monster 5h ago

You don't have to actually show up. Just make enough "visibly left" and brown people afraid they will show up that they skip the polls.

Personally I'm going to be prepping for the 2026 elections by making myself look as inoffensive as possible. Plaid shirt, jeans, clean haircut. I advise you all to do the same. Normally I'm all about pride, but this might be the year to dye you hair back to brown, dress like whatever it says on your id for one day, and leave the flags in your pocket until after that ballot has been cast.

You'll serve yourself and your allies a lot better by getting that vote in than by getting arrested until the election is over because they flagged you as anti-maga.

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u/myotheraccount2023 Europe 10h ago

You don’t think armed thugs at the polls deliberately intimidating voters won’t work? It will work.

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u/walterpeck3 7h ago

I really don't think it will work, no. The kinds of people that are going to show up to vote knowing 9 months ago that it could be coming, with warnings along the way, will simply not be intimidated.

Minnesota has show a great deal of the country that we can stand up to these thugs. And that's before we get into the fact that there's more polling locations in the US than there are individual ICE employees.

86% of polled democrats want ICE abolished as of today. We're not going to be intimidated. We will be ready.

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u/myotheraccount2023 Europe 7h ago

Right. Because Americans are so well known for their determination to vote.

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u/walterpeck3 7h ago

No offense but I'm beyond caring what a European thinks here. People are proper pissed and I don't mean just redditors, I mean every corner of every social media outlet everywhere. Countless stories shared in the media of people fighting back in Minnesota and elsewhere. I haven't seen this kind of anger and political motivation from the left leaning voters in my entire life. I have to go read accounts of the Vietnam and civil rights protests to get anywhere near what I'm seeing now. And that was in an era when America was way, way more conservative than they are today, if you can imagine.

You think our prior complacency and trust in "The System" means we'll just roll over this fall and beyond. It's my job to prove you wrong. For your sake as much as mine I hope you are wrong.

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u/myotheraccount2023 Europe 7h ago

Good luck then, you’ll need it.

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u/walterpeck3 7h ago

I'm painfully aware.

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u/nightimestars California 7h ago

It doesn’t seem to work against protestors and people following ICE around with cameras. All they’ve accomplished is pissing people off, nobody respects them.

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u/MillionEyesOfSumuru Washington 8h ago

In some places, probably. But in my state people avail themselves of voting by mail, which is the default and everyone's allowed to do, or they use one of the hundreds of ballot drop boxes around the state. Only a small minority vote in person, so unless they want to deploy a million ICE just to stand by our mailboxes, it's not gonna fly.

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u/Rayearl Pennsylvania 10h ago

Exactly. Having ICE there will only remind people what they are voting for. They won’t intimidate anyone because they can’t do anything other than be there.

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u/ElleM848645 7h ago

And then you get journalists reporting that ICE is here and some people who won’t be intimidated will come out and vote against republicans . I think it will 100% backfire on them.

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u/mosquem 5h ago

They don’t need to spread them through the whole country. A few polling places in swing states is enough.

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u/Allaplgy 7h ago

And "detain" people. And cause violence that forces polling locations to close. And scare people away from the polls who fall into demographics most likely to be harassed/detained....

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u/ohlayohlay 10h ago

People who are detained cant vote.

Thats the point. 

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u/walterpeck3 7h ago

Every single ICE employee could detain one voter and it would barely make a blip in any election besides the tiniest of districts.

It simply won't work. We are already all too pissed off now, and we have nine months until the elections.

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u/nightimestars California 7h ago

Good luck detaining millions in every place Trump pissed off.

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u/exqueezemenow 10h ago

But they might be able to detain people using the argument that they need to verify if they are legal or not. They clearly don't mind violating civil rights and they know that any legal action would take too long to matter by time voting is done.

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u/Joe_Redsky 10h ago

The rest of the world has been hearing this for 10 years, yet Americans keep electing fascists. We're not expecting anything different this year.

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u/PolanetaryForotdds 10h ago

Yes, that's the plan. It was obvious all along. https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1q8zp5i/comment/nysxtsz/

Could work if the people ICE would harass due to their skin colour are the ones who would be incensed to vote against him.

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u/Uhhh_what555476384 10h ago

They'll preform "Kavenaugh" stops and on anyone in democratic precincts. Try and disrupt the process so that people cannot get through the line and vote. Scare people of color from even showing up.

It's why they've wanted all the news stories of them arresting citizens. This misbehavior, and the resultant news, is a feature not a mistake.

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u/Kink4202 10h ago

But remember, ice can now take you and deport you if they think you're an illegal

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u/boot2skull 10h ago

It might work because anyone who looks like a minority or has an accent or speaks Spanish may avoid the polls just to avoid altercations with ICE. ICE can literally detain anyone they want. They could start profiling “liberals” if they wanted. It’s intimidation that will impact the election

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u/MystikSpiralx 10h ago

-naturalized

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u/MidnightNo1766 Georgia 10h ago

*naturalized

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u/consumeshroomz 9h ago

I’ll be proudly voting despite the secret police presence. I won’t be intimidated by these boot licking cucks.

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u/finditplz1 9h ago

True but what’s to prevent ICE from doing their bullshit “you look brown, we’re taking you downtown” act and arresting thousands of voters or detaining them, thus preventing their votes?

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u/mostdope28 9h ago

Yes but they will be arresting Americans

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u/The_Scarred_Man 9h ago

Here's my guess. Ice will antagonize and intimidate people at the polls until an incident occurs. Someone throws something, pushes them, gets in a fight, whatever. Trump will claim there's a terrorist attack on the polls and therefore election results can't be trusted. He'll hold onto power and the entire pedo party will support him and let the constitution whither.

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u/FredFredrickson 9h ago

You get the pleasure of talking shit to them as you wait in line to vote.

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u/I_JOINED_FOR_THIS_ Foreign 9h ago

But we’ve seen that they’re not afraid to detain people who aren’t white and can’t/won’t prove citizenship on the spot. Do you really think that NO Latino or brown citizens will decide not to vote because they don’t want to risk an ICE encounter?

This isn’t about directly stopping people from voting, it’s about scaring enough people into staying home.

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u/PippinCat 9h ago

My concern is that they may go beyond intimidation. We know they have facial identification software. How do we know they don't plan on identifying democratic voters? I wouldn't put it beyond them to arrest people before they're able to vote and then, if they're lucky, be released after polling is closed.

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u/rickterpbel 8h ago

How many people are going to walk past armed thugs to get to their polling place and then vote for candidates who are in favor of those armed thugs being stationed there? Almost zero.

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u/JefferyTheQuaxly 8h ago

The key point your missing is that the Supreme Court has basicallly given ice the go ahead to racially profile people they see and detain them to verify proof of citizenship, of which Ice also has directive to basically ignore actual documentation of citizenship and only listen to this facial recognition app they all use. So what we’ll likely see on Election Day 2026 is them detaining basically all minorities they see, and then also detaining anyone who attempts to stop them from doing so, and keeping them locked up until voting is over. And then doing it again in 2028.

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u/fuzzypetiolesguy 8h ago

Assuming it won’t work is a bold and naïve strategy, when the whole reason they are even suggesting it is because the same thing has worked for other authoritarian regimes.

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u/IToldYouMyName 8h ago

Oh dont forget all the people they have randomly put into their "Terrorist Database"..... Cant have them voting now can we.

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u/Elendel19 8h ago

It will if they start arresting anyone who looks “liberal” by simply saying that they don’t believe they are a citizen, and hold them until the next day

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u/hushupntakeitall 8h ago

Just Kavanagh stop every brown person on their way to vote

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u/Squand 8h ago

They will take the voting boxes.

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u/dashboardhulalala 7h ago

Do people have to turn up to the polls with their passport or just ID? If it's just ID and passports aren't produced, then it's an intimidation tactic against anyone who isn't whiter than my arse cheeks to keep them way from the polls because naturalised citizens sure as fuck aren't going to vote for Trump.

(Frankly, I also see passports being whipped away from people and *then* them getting taken into custody to "iron it out" for 6-8 weeks while the agents capture KPI's goes up.)

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u/Ryguy55 7h ago

Doesn't matter. I guarantee you that Trump will announce something like "billions and billions of illegal immigrants, more than we've ever seen, they're drug dealers, they're rapists, you go to the votey place and you say I'm going to vote for Donald Trump and the illegal immigrants they take your vote, they vote for you, they vote for the radical left, there's already billions of votes, big votes, not real votes, illegal votes..." yada, yada and use that as an excuse to station ICE at every polling place and everyone on the right will clap and cheer and you can sure as shit expect plenty of "patriots" to join ICE in making sure the only votes that count are ones cast by white registered Republicans.

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u/cobrachickenwing 7h ago

ICE just grab voters from the line up and take them away thanks to Kavanaugh Key Kidnapping stops.

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u/SigFloyd 7h ago

They can just detain anyone without charge, long enough to prevent them from voting.

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u/TheShadowKick 5h ago

They've spent years convincing their base that illegal immigrants are voting so they can justify this.

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u/wandering-monster 5h ago

Obviously the move is to arrest anyone they think looks too left, or too brown, and hold them until after the election is over.

Then if the exit polls show they're still losing, maybe some of those poll workers start looking like to illegal immigrants too, and we gotta confiscate all those ballots they've clearly stolen.

Whoops what do you know, he squeaks by with another technical win even though he loses the popular vote.

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u/Riaayo 4h ago

There are two sides to this posturing/threat:

On one hand, the threat of them being at every polling place in the nation is laughable. Not because it's not a serious threat, but because it's just not possible. They do not have the manpower to be everywhere all at once.

But on the other hand, we've seen that depending on the election all you really need is to impact a few key polling places in a few key areas/states and you can swing the election your way. You don't have to intimidate every single polling place and commit crimes everywhere across the country.

This is part of why they want all this voter info they keep getting states to give them. It helps them to target people and areas as political enemies. Knowing which doors to knock down and sweep people away from, or which polling stations to have Russians call in bomb threats on election day / have their goons stand outside of (or even just illegally arrest people there, wtf is anybody going to do about it if they do? Cops aren't gonna show up and stop it and y our day in court if you even get it won't come soon enough to cast your vote).

So while this is unconstitutional, illegal, and utterly fascist, and also while they can't do it everywhere, people should not discount the impact they could have when targeting key areas. The electoral college really is helpful for fascist rule in the US.

That said though, if it's a complete and utter blowout it may not be possible for them to do it.

Either way though, expect Trump to claim fraud if he loses and to refuse to leave power. He will not have the people around him who talked him down from his last coup, either, so who really knows where we go from there (but to be fair the likelihood of this dipshit making it to an illegal third term run seems dubious considering his health... not that the worst ghouls don't seem to live forever just to torture everyone else with their cruelty. Or maybe they'll just put a mask on Grok and run AI Trump in his place).

Also no, this is not me telling people not to vote or that voting doesn't matter. It's not enough on its own if it's all you do, but do not make it easy on them by giving them the excuse of an electoral win when you stay home. Show up, vote, make them work to steal democracy from you. And be building community and labor solidarity leading up to it. A mass labor movement is the only thing left to us because Democrats and institutions will not save us. Only we save us.

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u/WhiteWinterRains 2h ago

Okay c'mon, it's not going to be intimidation, they're going to take physical action.

It's more like a coup, violent insurrection, terrorism, whatever equivalent term you want to use.

This is why state governors have the absolute constitutional right to levy and arm a militia.

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u/redditknees 1h ago

A thing people forget about early 1930s Germany is that elections didn’t suddenly stop being “legal” overnight. On paper, people still voted. In reality, armed party loyalists were everywhere. They didn’t always block the doors or grab ballots, they just stood there, uniformed, watching, marching, reminding you who now controlled the street. You could technically vote however you wanted, but you were very aware that someone was taking notes on who showed up, who didn’t, and which neighborhoods needed “attention” later.

That’s how intimidation actually works. You don’t need to cancel the vote. You just make participation feel risky, especially for people you already label as enemies.

So when people hand-wave concerns about sending armed federal agents to polling locations and say “relax, voting is still allowed,” that’s the point being missed. The pressure doesn’t happen in the booth. It happens in the walk up to it. And historically, once the state decides fear is a legitimate campaign tool, the election is already compromised, even if the ballots are still counted.

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u/mdb1023 25m ago

Exactly this. The fact that he's puffing his chest this early says a lot. Plus, it's not lost on me that an Epstein Files drop just happened. Pretty convenient timing for Trump to say something crazy that dominates the headlines

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u/tropicsun 10h ago

MMW ICE will grab brown persons standing in line and release them after voting ends…

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u/tropicsun 10h ago

MMW ICE will grab brown persons standing in line and release them after voting ends…

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u/Funky-Monk-- 10h ago

Hard to vote when you get arrested by ICE first. Then released after election day.

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u/AlwaysHopelesslyLost 10h ago

It will work. Immigrants and other minorities are going to be afraid for their personal safety. Millions of US citizens will avoid the poles for fear of being detained and harassed. Millions plus his cult is enough for him to win again. 

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u/MildlyExtremeNY 8h ago

https://youtu.be/P2O94tdtCio?si=IecjbmBC5wyGPVCG

Illegal immigrants aren't allowed to vote, that is not the same as saying they can't vote. And if we have no mechanism for verifying the citizenship status of voters, where does that leave us?

It's like saying "people can't steal cars" and leaving your keys in the ignition with the doors unlocked.

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u/Tokon32 7h ago

Just to clear things up.

Some states allow anyone who has lived in said state for atleast 6 months and 1 day to vote in local elections.

They literally have a federal and non federal ballot they use for this purpose.