A judge has granted an ACLU of Michigan request for a temporary restraining order against six unidentified people who allegedly attempted to intimidate voters at the polls in the Metro Detroit area Tuesday.
"They were going from polling station to polling station, heavily surveilling voters as they came and go, following them to their cars, even following them into the polling station,” Phil Mayor, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU, said Wednesday. “And really just making voters deeply uncomfortable, intimidated, and terrorized.”
In an affidavit, Steven Raimi of Berkley said he served as a poll worker at four different locations yesterday, including Derby Middle School in Birmingham. When he arrived there yesterday at 2 p.m., he observed police leaving and three men on the sidewalk, “with whom the police had evidently been dealing.”
“One of the three men, who was tall and thin, was wearing a baseball cap that said something like ‘DONT ANNOY ME, I'M AN ASSHOLE. MY RIGHTS DONT STOP WHERE YOUR FEELINGS START.’ The other two men, including one who was burly and bearded, were wearing stars-and stripes-themed clothing," Raimi's affidavit said.
"I said to the three of them that they could not film people coming in and out of a polling location, and they responded that it was their First Amendment right to film, nobody has an expectation of privacy in public, and that they were thus free to record whatever they wanted. This response appeared to be scripted," his affidavit continued.
Raimi said he also spoke with people passing out flyers near the polling station, and they said the men had recently blocked a family leaving the polling station and given them the same scripted response when the family asked not to be filmed. “The family was eventually allowed to leave, after one family member asserted ‘I'm protecting my family,’” Raimi said in the affidavit.
The ACLU also submitted affidavits from Nicolette Ago, who said she encountered two men and a woman using their phones to record voters at a polling station in Royal Oak. The two men were wearing masks that covered their faces from the nose down, she said, and she heard poll workers asking the individuals who were filming to leave, but the individuals said they were part of the media. When asked which media outlet, Ago said the people responded that they were “independent.”
Ago said when she approached a voting machine to cast her ballot, one of the masked men was “standing 4-5 feet away from me filming me. The poll worker told the masked man who was filming to back up, and he refused to do so. I told the masked man who was filming that he was making me uncomfortable and interfering with my right to privacy, and I asked him at least three times to back up. He refused to move."
“After a minute or two of being repeatedly asked to back up by the poll worker and me, the masked man moved back one step. The poll worker told him to step back further and said that I had a right to privacy while I voted. The masked man responded, ‘You don't have a right to privacy while you're voting, I'm not moving.’”
People do have a First Amendment right to take photos in public, but “polling stations are special places,” Mayor, the ACLU attorney, said. “They receive special protections and special limitations under the First Amendment. And there is no First Amendment right to be harassing and filming voters inside a polling station, coming and going from polling stations, and to be making it difficult for voters to vote because of surveillance.”
Ago said she eventually stepped away from the polling machine without having cast her ballot “because I felt uncomfortable and intimidated doing so while I was being recorded.” Eventually, the man filming her stepped away, and she was able to cast her ballot, according to her affidavit.
Royal Oak police received a call around 2:45 p.m., according a spokesperson for the department. “Officers responded and spoke to the individuals, who then left soon after,” said Lieutenant Rich Millard in an email Wednesday.
A third affidavit from Lisa Feldberg, another voter, said she encountered five white men and one white woman filming people with their phones at a polling site in Birmingham. One man had an American flag bandana covering part of his face. She said one man followed her into the hallway, put his phone “about a foot in front of my face,” and when she asked him to stop, told her, "Your request has been denied."
“I must have made a face in response, because the woman in the group said, ‘Oh look at the reaction on her,’” Feldberg’s affidavit said. Feldberg told poll workers she wasn’t comfortable walking to her car, and they said they’d called police and offered to walk her out. Later, she said, she saw the individuals filming another man, and her, in the parking lot.
Birmingham police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mayor said they’ve not yet identified who the people filming were, but have heard from more people who also encountered them at polling places.
“What these individuals did is illegal. It's important that that message be sent not just in this election, but in future elections," Mayor said.
