title:  Federal Judge Demands RNC Reveal Details Of Voter Intimidation Pact With Trump
text: A federal judge has ordered the Republican National Committee to reveal the details of any pacts they may have made with Donald Trump s campaign to engage in  ballot security  efforts during next week s presidential election.U.S. District Court John Vazquez has given the RNC until 5 p.m. on Tuesday to lay out any plans they may have made with the Trump campaign to participate in what amounts to voter intimidation through practices that have been banned for decades. He has also ordered that the RNC explain exactly what Kellyanne Conway, Trump s campaign manager, meant when she said that the campaign is working with the RNC to  monitor precincts. According to Politico, the order comes  after the Democratic National Committee went to court last week to allege that the RNC was violating consent decrees from the 1980s settling a case alleging that GOP poll watchers sought to intimidate minority voters in a practice then known as  caging.   Under these agreements, poll watchers can be organized by the GOP, but they are prohibited from  any effort to intimidate voters as they enter a polling place or to challenge individual voters, except as part of a program approved in advance by the court. The RNC insists that they have not violated the agreement. They have pointed to a memo that was sent out reminding its personnel, national committee members and others about the consent decree and instructing them to keep their distance from any ballot security efforts. The memos tell RNC workers, officials and volunteers not to engage in poll watching efforts at all, not to take video or audio recordings at polling places and not to mention ballot fraud concerns on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. But this isn t what Trump s supporters are being told by those at the top of their party s ticket. Like Conway, Mike Pence has indicated that the campaign is in cahoots with the RNC to ensure  ballot integrity  at the polls.During an August town hall meeting in Denver, Pence said,  the Trump Campaign and the Republican National Committee are working very, very closely with state governments and secretaries of state all over the country to ensure ballot integrity. Similarly, just last month, Conway said that the that the Trump campaign is  actively working with the national committee, the official party, and campaign lawyers to monitor precincts around the country. On Monday, it was announced that Democratic party leaders from four states had filed lawsuits against Donald Trump, his advisor Roger Stone, and the state Republican parties for conspiring to threaten, intimidate, and thereby prevent minority voters in urban neighborhoods from voting in the 2016 election. Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images