Plan B for Trump’s election intimidation: An iron fist in a velvet glove

Gen. Dan Caine, the nation’s senior-most military leader, recently told Sen Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) that the U.S. military has “no plans” to be at polling places in November. But President Trump has made it impossible to dismiss fears of military interference.

To the contrary, his persistent assault on the integrity of the voting process, his suggestion that Republicans “should take over the voting in at least 15 places,” and his refusal to rule out invoking the Insurrection Act have led many to begin bracing for an imminent collision.

Americans across the country are worrying that their constitutionally-assured right to vote will be curtailed by Trump’s increasingly frantic search for anything that will preserve his party’s congressional majorities.

The bar for legally deploying troops to polling places is high. Under the Posse Comitatus Act, the president cannot use federal military troops for law enforcement purposes. Meanwhile, federal law makes it a crime to post “troops or armed men” at polling site, but exceptions exist. The Insurrection Act permits the president to deploy troops in response to “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages” or “domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.” Troops or armed men can be legally deployed at polling sites to “repel enemies of the United States.”

If the president wants to deploy troops to election sites, he can easily come up with a set........

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