Ballot Security Task Force

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The National Ballot Security Task Force were a controversial group set up in the United States of America by the Republican National Committee in 1981, in New Jersey in a bid to win a gubernatorial election. They were alleged to have carried out 'voter-suppression' and intimidation.

The force consisted of a group of armed, off-duty police officers wearing armbands, who were hired to patrol polling sites in black and Hispanic neighborhoods of Newark and Trenton.

Initially, letters were mailed out (using an outdated voter registration list) to largely Latino and African-American citizens. 45,000 letters were returned as non-deliverable; these 45,000 addresses were converted into a list of voters. These voters were challenged by the BSTF. The Republican National Committee filed a request for election supervisors to strike these voters from the rolls, but the Commissioners of Registration refused when they discovered that the RNC had used outdated information.

On Election Day, the BSTF posted large signs, without identification and with an official appearance, reading:

WARNING
THIS AREA IS BEING PATROLLED BY THE
NATIONAL BALLOT
SECURITY TASK FORCE
IT IS A CRIME TO FALSIFY A BALLOT OR
TO VIOLATE ELECTION LAWS

The armed officers were drawn from the ranks of off-duty county deputy sheriffs and local police, and prominently displayed revolvers, two-way radios and BSTF armbands. BSTF patrols challenged and questioned voters at the polls and blocked the way of some prospective voters. A civil lawsuit was filed after the election, charging the RNC with illegal harassment and voter intimidation. The suit was settled in 1982, when the state and national Republican parties signed a pledge in U.S. District Court that they would not allow tactics that could intimidate Democratic voters, though they did not admit any wrongdoing. Democrat James J. Florio lost to Republican Thomas H. Kean by 1,797 votes in the gubernatorial election. The court order that resulted was invoked in a number of similar incidents throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. The pattern of sending mailings and creating questionable challenge lists is a model that has also endured, and has been compared by Democrats to the Republican use (and alleged misuse) of the 'scrub list' in Florida during the Presidential election in 2000.