No voters should be intimidated

Fears have spread that the Republican Party, facing critical losses in midterm House races, would use its government role to suppress and intimidate the opposition when the autumn balloting gets underway.

Fueling the trepidation is President Donald Trump, who has pushed since last year for measures that could usurp the power of blue and red states to independently administer their elections, and destabilize voting procedures.

It isn’t paranoia. After his supporters’ Jan. 6 insurrection, Trump said he regretted not sending soldiers to seize voting machines in key states in 2020. After that travesty, he and his crew should be able to understand their critics’ suspicions that authorities will be used to intimidate voters at balloting sites this fall.

So it did not sound unreasonable last week when James Scheuerman, the Democrat on the Nassau County Board of Elections, called on Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder to keep patrols, including federal agents, away from polling sites.

Cops should be on hand only if called on by the board or in response to a specific, documented incident, Scheuerman argued. Visible uniformed presence, “even when well-intentioned, can suppress turnout rather than protect it — particularly among voters of color and other communities with historical reason to distrust armed authority at the ballot box,” he said.

Rather than give proper assurances that police would have an unimposing presence as peacekeepers just in case of disorder, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, running for governor, issued spiteful partisan remarks.

“It sounds like an admission of guilt,” Blakeman’s spokesman said of Scheuerman’s expressed concern. “If you weren’t trying to cheat, why would you be concerned by ballot security by federal and local law enforcement? Fair elections are something that everyone should want.”

This reply is unbecoming of an elected public executive. It fails to answer the request by the Board of Elections commissioner. Blakeman seems to be far more interested in fueling “ballot security” canards at a moment when the House GOP majority has a rational fear of legitimate defeat.

Fantasies of systematic “election fraud” are still just that. On Long Island, there were claims last year in a legislative race that some absentee ballots were delivered to voters already filled out for GOP candidates. The matter was referred to the state attorney general’s office for investigation, with the outcome not yet known.

How common is finagling in either Long Island county? Two Republican members of Congress, Rep. Nick LaLota and ex-Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, previously worked for the Suffolk and Nassau Board of Elections. We haven’t heard of any security or cyber breaches from them.

Obviously anyone ineligible to vote shouldn’t be voting, and safeguards and checks have long been in place in New York. Still, the effort to sow distrust continues. Paranoia and verbal attacks on the system should not be fueled or manipulated by either side, especially with a little more than two months left until early voting begins.