“These calls are more than wrong and irresponsible; if executed, they could be illegal," Sen. Bob Casey wrote in a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch. | AP Photo Sen. Casey calls for DOJ to intervene after white nationalists vow to poll watch

Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) is calling on the Department of Justice to intervene after multiple media outlets reported that white nationalists are planning to swarm polling locations in Philadelphia on Election Day to monitor for voter fraud.

“These plans to monitor the polls are little more than thinly veiled attempts to suppress and delegitimize the votes of predominantly minority citizens, inflected with innuendo that recalls dark times in our country’s civil rights struggle,” Casey wrote in a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and one of her top deputies. “These calls are more than wrong and irresponsible; if executed, they could be illegal.”


POLITICO reported on Wednesday that the National Socialist Movement elements of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Freedom Party plan to deploy their members to Philadelphia and poll locations in many other states to support Donald Trump through poll watching and other efforts.

In one case, an alt-right website detailed how liquor and marijuana will be passed out in the city’s “ghetto” to discourage people from voting. Additional plans call for hidden cameras to be installed in Philadelphia to assist in observing the process.

Casey said such brazen tactics cannot be tolerated. “We have come too far to allow a group of white nationalists to intimidate minority voters in Philadelphia or anywhere throughout the nation,” he wrote.