Trump Camp And NV GOP Ordered To Appear In Court In Voter Intimidation Lawsuit

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump meets with faith and community leaders before delivering a speech, Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2016, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)
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A federal judge Tuesday ordered representatives from the Donald Trump campaign and the Nevada Republican Party to appear at a hearing in his courtroom Wednesday afternoon in a lawsuit filed by Nevada Democrats accusing them of the engaging in voter intimidation tactics.

U.S. District Judge Richard Franklin Boulware also ordered the Trump campaign and state party to turn over any training materials they provided to “poll watchers, poll observers, exit pollsters or any other similarly tasked individuals.”

At the hearing, the Trump campaign and the Nevada GOP should be prepared to respond to the motion for a temporary restraining order that the Democrats requested in the lawsuit, the judge’s order said.

The Nevada Democratic Party’s lawsuit was filed along with lawsuits from three other Democratic state parties against their GOP counterparts and the Trump campaign in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Arizona. They allege that the Trump campaign and the state Republican parties have violated the Voting Rights Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act, with an approach to elections monitoring that Democrats described as “vigilante voter intimidation.” Roger Stone, the longtime GOP operative and former Trump adviser, was also named in the complaints, as was the group he is affiliated with, Stop the Steal, for its poll watcher recruitment efforts.

In Ohio, the judge ordered the defendants to respond to the Democrats’ complaints by Wednesday evening and provide any objections they may have to the judge placing an order limiting voter intimidation and the presence of unauthorized poll observers at election sites.

The judge presiding over the Arizona case issued a briefing schedule requesting responses to the Democratic complaints by 5 p.m. Wednesday, with an option for the Democrats to counter-respond by noon Thursday.

The judge in Pennsylvania issued what appeared to be a order outlining the typical next steps in the cases that he presides over. It did not include any specific expedited scheduling for this case.

A separate legal action filed by the Democratic National Committee against the Republican National Committee alleges that the RNC violated a decades-old consent decree limiting its poll watching activities by collaborating with Trump’s poll watcher call to arms. The judge has requested that the RNC hand over documents related to any agreements it made with the Trump campaign to assist in its elections monitoring activities.

Read the court order in the Nevada case below:

NSDP v NVGOP — Boulware Order (1) by Jon Ralston on Scribd

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