They should be famous. Local news, national news, at home, at their soon to be former places of work…
Upon reading the headline without even clicking on the link yet, my first thought:
“Bet they White.”
Please explain how depositing your own ballot into a drop box is considered “impersonating a postal worker” (without saying a word) any more illegal than “impersonating law enforcement” by openly carrying a firearm while dressed up and ready for urban warfare.
All legality (or lack thereof) aside, please don’t suggest that BIPOC or any marginalized folks be willing bait; that’s not a good look, let alone a viable solution.
They are legal, and it’s all part of a coordinated campaign by Steve Bannon’s group. This American Life covered this. The photographing of license plates, asking questions, etc is all right out of the playbook they’ve been given.
Edit: oops, @anon81034786 beat me to it, with a better link. 
Nothing legal about an armed person confronting a voter at any point in the process, inside or outside the 75 foot radius.
Dressing up as a Postal Employee (with some allowances for TV and movies) is illegal. Certainly with the aim of a Postal Inspector there to witness and enforce the law - which they couldn’t because they aren’t really postal workers - the level of accuracy would constitute it being “impersonation”.
But it isn’t a game of “who is doing a more illegal action” (though one is Federal and the most likely falls under state laws), Fighting voter intimidation shouldn’t require some sort of Always Sunny-esque scheme.
Call the cops. Call the local government. Call the media. Call attention to and don’t stop until it stops. It won’t get better with out constant pressure to make it better.
The NPR reporting said it was as long as no actual threats were happening. Certainly one would think standing there asking angry questions with a military rifle would be considered “threatening” by any reasonable definition, but IANAL nor am I familiar with the finer points of US election law.
Accusing someone of being a ballot mule would most certainly be voter intimidation by any definition.
I’m guessing the people who designed this playbook have consciously walked up to the legality line as close as they think they can. If they go a little over, they probably know they can still get away with it because all that will happen is a little bland “both sides” reporting of it on NPR.
Even if it’s right up to some line specifically around voter intimidation, it’s clearly harassment.
Call the cops. Ask for a police report of the incident to be filed.
I think it’s safe to assume for anyone here, that someone photographing your license plate while standing there visibly armed is harassment.
Even if the report does nothing for you and causes the person no impact at all, it will still annoy the police. This leaves the police with 2 options to eliminate their annoyance. They can just ignore the calls, which if something does happen or a news story picks it up is going to to look really bad for the police to just be ignoring calls. Every good news story and PR likes to hear that policy respond to calls.
Alternatively, they can do something to prevent the harassment. What they do may not be remove the harasser as we desire. It could just be that they stay there too. That could be good or bad, depending on your perspective. Hopefully it would at least remove some conflict, however I acknowledge that could be a big “hope”.
Yeah, some of those that work forces are the same that suppress voters. Those that lied, think they’re justified, and by wearing the camo they’re the chosen whites.
Well the people that designed this playbook are not the ones performing it. So unless actual evidence is provided that they told the actual perpetrators to step over the line, (extremely unlikely, IMHO) they are going to get away Scott free. The only real 'both sides" thing going on here is that people’s reaction to a heterogeneous group. If the group is on “their” side, people tend to regard anybody that is actually breaking the law as a few extreme people not representative of the whole. But if that group is on the “other” side, any criminal acts ARE representative of the entire group.
Per the 2nd amendment, I’m sure they’re all members of a well regulated militia.
By “both sides” I was referring to the chronic problem of mainstream media treating these fascists as just another iteration of a political party in their coverage, thereby legitimizing and minimizing behaviour like we’re seeing here. The press has contributed pretty badly to the rise of fascism by not taking it seriously enough in coverage, and acting like it’s still 1992 in politics.
The far right know they will get away with stuff like this, so they keep doing it.
The goal here is to intimidate, and/or lead to a violent escalation. Period.
Given our horrible gun laws here, I can’t see anything changing without something like the Reagan-era Black Panthers demonstration on the steps of the CA Capitol.
Or some other massive counter demonstrations.
I’m not being defeatist, I think it can be done. And without guns. But I don’t think the police are the ones who are going to stop this kind of BS.
The police are probably at least associated, if not directly involved, with the people perpetrating this BS.
Protip: If you’re wearing a disguise to your event, you already realize that you are doing something illegal.
