Joseph Sabino Mistick: Defending our right to vote

In our history, the mix of guns and voting has only been associated with the goal of suppressing the votes of certain Americans.

In the 1850s, the Know-Nothing Party, nativists who resented the Catholic immigrant population in Baltimore, used election violence to move the state’s electoral votes to Millard Fillmore.

In the Confederate states after Reconstruction, Blacks were driven away from the polls first with violence. The Ku Klux Klan then began a reign of terror with cross-burnings at the homes of Black elected officials and followed that with thousands of lynchings over decades.

That opened the door to full-scale legal apartheid — Jim Crow laws, poll taxes, literacy tests and whites-only primaries. The latest dirty tricks include purging voter rolls and the elimination of neighborhood polling places and convenient early voting.

We should by now have grown past all that, but once again the rumor of violence on Election Day is upon us. Some groups have threatened to appear armed at the polls in order to “protect” the vote, when their real goal is to suppress the vote.

The sheriffs of Allegheny and Westmoreland counties have already promised a strong Election Day presence, and other agencies are ready to assist. But because of a peculiar gap in Pennsylvania law — something that we should straighten out before the next election — we have to help, too.

We have gotten it backward here. Guns are not prohibited near or in Pennsylvania polling places unless they are located in a school or court facility. But police officers must stay 100 feet away from polling places because their presence might intimidate voters.

In sensible times, this was rarely a problem, but these are not sensible times. These rogue poll watchers call themselves “militias” to gain some official-sounding status, but they’re just gangs. Like all bullies, they figure that their tough talk and fearsome appearance will keep folks from standing up to them.

These bullies believe that they know their rights, but voters have rights, too. Pennsylvania law still provides broad protection from voter intimidation in its many forms, and when the bullies intimidate any of us, our right to vote trumps everything else.

The Pennsylvania Department of State has provided a list of some of the activities that cross the line, including “verbal or physical confrontation of voters by persons dressed in official-looking uniforms,” “the threat of violence to interfere with a person’s right to vote” and the “ostentatious showing of weapons.”

So don’t let anyone scare you away. If any of that behavior intimidates you at the polls, speak up. Election officials will be seated at the table where you sign to vote, and if you tell them that someone is intimidating you as you wait to vote, they will call law enforcement.

After 9/11, the Metropolitan Transportation Agency in New York City adopted the slogan, “If you see something, say something.” It was a way to remind us that we all have a role in the defense of our freedoms, enlisting average citizens in the fight against terrorism.

And we need that same vigilance here, because anything that is intended to intimidate Americans who are exercising their right to vote is terrorism, too.