OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, who is locked in a surprisingly tight race for the U.S. Senate with former Major League Baseball great and GOP nominee Steve Garvey, was critical of Republican National Committee efforts to shore up voter and ballot integrity ahead of and during the November elections.
In an interview with former RNC chairman Michael Steele, who was filling in for far-left MSNBC host Joy Reid, both men appeared to scoff at RNC co-chair Lara Trump’s pledge to pursue all legal avenues against anyone suspected of violating voting laws and balloting procedures.
“So, congressman, you have Lara Trump, who’s the co-chair of the Republican National Committee. She was at Turning Point USA Action’s Detroit convention, and she had this to say about the message they want to put out on the street,” Steele said before playing a clip of Trump making the threat.
“We’re also sending a loud and clear message out there to anyone who thinks about cheating in an election. If you cheat in an election, we will find you, we will track you down, and we will prosecute you to the full extent of the law,” she said.
“I would say that’s a little bit of projection to some extent because all of that could be applied to what they’re already planning to do,” Steele responded. “They’ve already made a big deal about amassing over 100,000 people who will be ‘poll watchers,’ which is nothing more than just voter intimidation at various polling places.”
He then suggested that Republicans were planning on cheating.
“What are you hearing and seeing coming out of the ranks of the Democratic Party across the country, creating the coalitions and the efforts to also safeguard against what is clearly a stated effort to ‘catch cheating’ by Republicans, but instead really claiming it’s Democrats are the ones doing the cheating?” he asked.
“Well, that statement you just played was very rich considering that with their whole fake elector plot, this is exactly what they were trying to do: defraud voters of their legitimately cast ballots,” Schiff claimed. “But in terms of what the Democratic Party is hearing, is doing, we’re very concerned they’re going to try to suppress the vote in many ways, suppress it, as I mentioned, with these voter suppression laws, but also suppress it with having people intimidate others at the polling places and putting out messages that essentially try to discourage people.”
“You know, we’ve seen in California, and certainly in other parts of the country as well, efforts in particular to discourage voters of color from going to the polling place through intimidation and scare tactics,” he went on. “You know, we want to make sure we push back against that, that we have legitimate efforts at voter protection, and so, you know, we’re marshaling election experts and others to volunteer and try to make sure there isn’t that kind of intimidation going on, that everybody’s vote is counted, that where these states have purged voter rolls in an effort to make it even harder for people to vote, that we’re getting people re-registered.
“So we’re taking this as seriously as a heart attack because at the end of the day, Michael, as you’ve often pointed out, this is going to be close, and it’s all going to come down to who turns out. And given the efforts Republicans are telegraphing, it also may come down to whether they succeed in validating the legitimate votes of people,” he concluded.
WATCH:
Republicans are not trying to prevent anyone from voting, Lara Trump and others within the party have repeatedly argued. Rather, they are trying to ensure that everyone who does vote has the legal right to do so, and that ballots are legitimate.
