Concern rises about "vigilante poll watching"

Officials fight Donald Trump's claims of a rigged election

Civil rights groups have begun to express alarm at remarks from Mr. Trump that they see as goading his supporters to intimidate minorities at the polls.

Arturo Vargas, the executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials Education Fund, said he planned to formally contact the Justice Department as soon as this week, to ask that it guard against the kind of voting disruptions Mr. Trump has encouraged.

“It is a major concern that we have this candidate promoting vigilante poll watching,” Mr. Vargas said.

And Michael Podhorzer, the political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said that progressive groups were deeply concerned about the possibility of disruptions at the polls on Election Day. 

Mr. Podhorzer said that Mr. Trump’s recent comments about a rigged election had the potential to “incite violence and bloodshed.”

Mr. Podhorzer said that Democrats would be closely monitoring polling places for signs of interference in states where voters can cast their ballots before Election Day.

“We will start to see whether folks are out intimidating voters in predominantly African-American communities, and at least get a sense of what direction that might be going in,” Mr. Podhorzer said, adding of Mr. Trump’s speech, “This is beyond the pale.”

Kasich drops the hammer on Trump: Rigged election talk is like ‘saying we never landed on the moon’

“Look, to say that elections are rigged, and that all these votes are stolen, that’s like saying we never landed on the moon,” the Ohio governor said. 

“That’s how silly it is… I don’t think that’s good for our country and our democracy, and I don’t believe we have any massive fraud.”

Kasich said that Trump’s claims of a “rigged” election were worrisome because they could undermine a significant number of people’s faith in our democratic process.

“The problem is, it does create doubt in people’s minds,” he explained. 

“And I worry about 25% of Americans who may say, after an election is over, ‘It was stolen.’ That is a big, fat joke.”