Due to its lengthy history of minority voter suppression tactics, the Republican National Committee (RNC) has been operating under a court-enforced consent decree that restrict’s the party’s ability to engage in “ballot security” programs. Though the party has asked its members to refrain from any participation in poll-watching or similar activities this year, Democrats have accused them of again violating this agreement.
TPM Muckraker reported on Thursday that one GOP operative may have inadvertently revealed that the party is secretly doing exactly what they promised not to do.
Chris Marston is legal counsel and Election Day operations chair for the Republican Party of Virginia. A Republican compliance consultant, he also serves as assistant treasurer for Rebuilding America Now, a pro-Donald Trump super PAC.
In a new court filing by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) points to a conference call on Tuesday in which Marston was answering a question about voting machine security. They claim he “let slip a reference” on the call to RNC-hired workers engaging in “ballot security efforts.”
MARSTON: I’ve actually, I’ve got the folks RNC has hired on, um, to help them with.
I’m sorry [laughing], the RNC is not doing anything related [laughing] to election day operations.
Listen:
In 2013, while serving as treasurer for Virginia Republican gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli, Marston abruptly resigned as treasurer of an anti-Hillary Clinton super PAC after ThinkProgress reported on its website hosting “SlapHillary,” a video game in which players were encouraged to slap Clinton across her face.
The consent decree, renewed by a federal court in 2009 for another eight years, was set to expire in December 2017. But, that order stated, if the DNC proves “by a preponderance of the evidence that the RNC has violated the terms of the Consent Decree,” before that point, it will be extended for eight more years from the date of that violation. The DNC’s filing Thursday asked the court to issue an injunction to stop the party from “ voter intimidation and other forms of ‘ballot security’ measures in concert with the Trump campaign and its associates” and to extend the decree until 2024.