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“I’ll look for . . . well, it’s called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can’t speak American,” he said. “I’m going to go right up behind them. I’ll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I’m not going to do anything illegal. I’m going to make them a little bit nervous.”

Two Trump supporters in Virginia last week staged a 12-hour open carry “protest” outside a Democratic campaign office, though they denied they posed any kind of threat. If that sort of the activity is the harbinger of things to come at polling places on Election Day, it could be a violation of federal law.

The Voting Rights Act includes a provision that prohibits any attempt to “intimidate, threaten, or coerce” a person trying to vote, and there's a section of the federal criminal code banning voter intimidation as well. In theory, that could set up a confrontation between federal voter intimidation laws and state open-carry laws (federal law would generally trump state law). However, according to Kristen Clarke, the president and executive director of Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, federal laws are rarely ever used to address voter intimidation claims.

"There’s not just much of a history of the federal government using them,” Clarke said, adding that her group, which monitors elections to ensure all eligible voters can cast a ballot, is more reliant on state and local systems to address instances of voter intimidation.

Even though the legal language surrounding voter intimidation doesn't specifically mention weapons, certain actions with firearms could certainly be interpreted as such, depending on the context, legal experts and voting rights advocates told TPM.

“People going to the polls, and just bringing their guns with them, even it that’s not waving around threateningly, going to a polling place where you have a gun clearly can be intimidating for both black and white voters, because of the history of violence that we’ve seen,” the NAACP's Ross said.

An Alabama gun rights activist was prosecuted on state voter obstruction charges for bringing a holstered gun to a polling place in the 2014 election, though elsewhere in the state, open-carry has been allowed at election sites.

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“These are places with a history of voter intimidation and also very liberal gun laws,” Ross said.

Trump has for months complained about the possibility of an election somehow “rigged” against him, but recently, the rhetoric has taken on a more ominous, and even racially-tinged tone, that specifically mentions voter fraud at the ballot box. Last week, he told a mostly white crowd in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, to “watch other communities, because we don't want this election stolen from us." He said at rally in Michigan late last month that his supporters, after they vote, should "pick some other place ... and go sit there with your friends and make sure it's on the up and up."

It appears that some of his supporters are prepared to heed his call. Steve Webb, a 61-year-old Trump supporter from Ohio, told the Boston Globe he planned to go “watch” from his precinct “for sure."

“I’ll look for . . . well, it’s called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can’t speak American,” he said. “I’m going to go right up behind them. I’ll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I’m not going to do anything illegal. I’m going to make them a little bit nervous.”

#FatNRA #Irondouche