Why Fears of Federal Troops at the Polls Persist

Inconsistent statements from the Pentagon keep congressional Democrats and others guessing about the prospect of troop deployment at voting spots in November. Turn any article into a podcast. Upgrade now to start listening. Members can share articles with friends & family to bypass the paywall. In an interview with New York Times reporters in January, President Donald Trump said that he regrets not directing the National Guard to seize voting equipment in 2020 to find evidence of election fraud. When asked in May about sending Guard troops to polling places during the midterm elections, the president responded, “I’d do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections.” Mark Sawyer is a reporter for The Dispatch based in Washington, D.C., and the inaugural Journalism Excellence Fellow through The Fund for American Studies. He previously worked as an investigator and open-source intelligence analyst focused on a range of issues including election integrity, national security, and Russia's use of disinformation and the internet to pursue its foreign policy goals. His favorite professional experiences have been serving as an election observer in Ukraine and Moldova. When Mark is not going down rabbit holes for his latest article, you can probably find him experimenting in the kitchen, birdwatching in the city, or convincing his unsuspecting friends to play a complicated board game. More We Think You’d Like