Administration Unveils Courage Based Voting

The Trump administration announced Friday that it has no plans to deploy immigration agents en masse to polling places, a reassurance so comprehensive that election officials and voting-rights groups immediately accelerated preparations for immigration agents at polling places. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem dismissed the concern as fearmongering while retaining the government’s right to send officers wherever officials identify a threat, a warrant or an insufficiently nervous electorate. The policy gives democracy a useful suspense feature: voters will not know whether the person near the ballot scanner is an election worker, a federal agent or a heavily equipped parent waiting for the school bake sale.

Community groups are recruiting clergy members, lawyers and local leaders to calm voters who may mistake armed federal personnel for a subtle suggestion to go home. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber has urged citizens to focus on casting their ballots, apparently overlooking the concentration benefits of wondering whether choosing a congressional candidate includes a complimentary review of one’s immigration history. Officials emphasized that agents would not “patrol” voting sites, though federal personnel could still enter them to serve warrants, investigate threats or conduct other activities that become non-patrolling when described by a cabinet secretary. Under the distinction, an officer may stand beside a polling place, question someone and leave without ever having technically been there in the alarming sense.

President Donald Trump praised the arrangement as a major expansion of electoral access. “We’re making voting very safe, maybe too safe, because people see federal agents and become incredibly calm, especially the frightened people,” Trump said. “Only the calmest voters will vote, and that’s how you get tremendous democracy, probably the most relaxed democracy anywhere in the world.” Administration officials added that citizens with nothing to hide should have nothing to fear, apart from uniforms, tactical equipment, federal questioning and the possibility that their routine civic participation may become an unscheduled appointment with Homeland Security. The result is America’s first courage-based voting system: one citizen, one vote, provided the citizen is willing to walk past a tactical vest to cast it.

* None of the quotes in this article were spoken by an actual person. More info.