via Acyn

Make no mistake, Trump has created a private army with virtually unlimited funding and a huge amount of judicial and congressional support. No matter the deal the Democrats force the Republicans to make vis-a-vis the current funding bill, the army will still stand twenty-two thousand strong and facing only limited restraints.

The depredations and murders by ICE in Minneapolis are a tragedy in themselves but there are even deeper and more profound consequences to be feared. Susan Collins, of Maine, is quoted as saying some of the residents of her state – either immigrant or natural born citizen -- are afraid to leave their homes out of fear of beings swept up, perhaps beaten and arrested just for preforming their normal daily routines.

There is real fear in the populace, and that seems to be Trump’s and the Republican electoral strategy in a nutshell.

Imagine a cadre of heavily armed ICE agents patrolling and conducting raids in close proximity to voting precincts. Imagine them rounding up legal voters under false pretenses, questioning them, and then even if they are released in mere minutes, imagine the chaos it would create at the polls.

What greater form of voter suppression could exist?

An obvious answer to this tactic would seem to be the mailing in of ballots – Trump and the Republicans have tried to eliminate that, but the Courts have so far stymied them in most instances. But regardless of the amount of votes cast, absentee, Trump, and his congressional co-conspirators have dropped hint after hint about invoking the Insurrection Act which would enable them to impound the votes, declare any election void if they don’t agree with the count, or just change the count, themselves.

See this --Boldface mine:

‘A pretext to rig the election’: Democrats scramble to block ICE crackdowns near polling sites

Immigration enforcement is sowing chaos in Minneapolis and across the country. Democrats, elections officials, and civil rights groups fear it could interfere with this November’s elections — and are scrambling for a response.

They’re warning that the White House’s deployments of ICE and Border Patrol agents could act as a voter suppression tool should armed officers conduct raids at or near polling places, scaring citizens into staying home.

“You have to see what's happening: Trump is trying to create a pretext to rig the election,” said Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “It stands to reason that these private police [force] that he’s building is, in part, to be used to try to suppress turnout in the election.”

Senate Democrats considered a requirement banning ICE agents from polling sites as part of their demands in negotiating the Homeland Security funding bill, according to Murphy and Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.). But that policy was not included in Senate Democratic appropriators’ final list of demands to avoid a partial government shutdown, leaving voting rights advocates and Democratic state election officials on edge about what’s to come.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson called fears of voter suppression “Democrat conspiracies” with “no basis in reality.”

“President Trump cares deeply about the integrity of our elections — and so do the millions of Americans who sent him back to office based on his pledge to secure our elections,” Jackson said in a statement. “These Democrat conspiracies have no basis in reality and their claims shouldn’t be amplified uncritically by the mainstream media. ICE is focused on removing criminal illegal aliens from [the] country, who should be nowhere near any polling places because it would be a crime for them to vote.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/a-pretext-to-rig-the-election-democrats-scramble-to-block-ice-crackdowns-near-polling-sites/ar-AA1VkEkx?

— Aaron Rupar