With voters set
to cast ballots in two critical races that could help determine control of both chambers of the U.S. Congress, fears of potential voter suppression are running high in Maine.
Officials in the state have prepared for months against the possibility of election interference from federal officials, and the state remains on high alert in the run-up to the general election on November 3.
Training materials were updated this year to include references to federal statutes barring armed federal agents from polling sites.
Training materials
for law enforcement officials in the state, obtained by The Intercept through a public records request, were updated this year for the elections to include explicit references to federal statutes barring armed federal agents from polling sites.
In an interview with the
New York Times
this week, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said the inclusion of such references was a direct defense in response to the fearmongering around election integrity from President Donald Trump and his administration.
“This is the first time ever that we have had to engage in scenario planning to safeguard against potential federal interference in elections,” Bellows said. “It seems like the federal government is now adversarial to the states.”
Bellows’s office offered up the training slideshow, which cites a U.S.
law
that bars armed civil or military officers from posting at voting sites, to law enforcement personnel in the run-up to Maine’s primary election in June and again in the lead-up to the general election on November 5.
Nationwide, Democratic officials have expressed
fears
that the Trump Administration might weaponize U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or other federal agencies to undermine the rights of voters. In New York, state Attorney General Letitia James issued a
reminder to voters
that federal officials may not “police the polls,” and the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP called out the assignme
