Trump’s FBI Raids an Ohio Voter Registration Group in Its Latest Bid to Suppress the Vote
With the midterms approaching in a key swing state, the FBI has raided the offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative—a pro-democracy coalition that registers voters and organizes for progressive causes—and searched the homes of its leaders and staff. It is one more escalation in the Justice Department’s campaign to turn federal law enforcement into a tool for intimidating the people who help Americans vote.
Democracy Docket reports:
The FBI raided the offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative (OOC), a pro-democracy organization that helps register voters and organizes political activities for Democratic and progressive causes in the state, MSNOW reports.
The bureau also searched the homes of OOC leaders and staff members. Agents appeared to be seeking information as part of an ongoing investigation into alleged voter fraud, though the bureau has in recent months opened similar investigations based on conspiracy theories. …
The raids represent a major escalation in the Department of Justice’s attack on voting ahead of the midterm elections. They are also a continuation of the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on pro-voting and progressive organizations. …
The Brennan Center for Justice, which has worked with OOC on pro-voting lawsuits in the past, said the raids appear “to be an outrageous fishing expedition, an attempt to intimidate people working for democracy in our communities and country.”
The pretext is familiar: an avalanche of “voter fraud” referrals—here, some 1,200 cases handed over by Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, along with the registration data of nearly 8 million Ohioans—recycled into armed raids on the very groups that get eligible citizens onto the rolls.
The Constitution assigns the running of elections to the states precisely to keep the federal executive from putting its thumb on the scale. Sending agents to search the homes of voter-registration organizers, months before the midterms, in a state expected to be close, is exactly the kind of interference that design was meant to prevent.
This is on track with what Andy Craig pointed out in this space previously: “Donald Trump and his administration are waging an unprecedented, multi-pronged attack on this year's midterm congressional elections. Even compared to his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, the scope and severity of this assault is unprecedented.”
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