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During the first presidential debate, Donald Trump wasasked by moderator Chris Wallaceif he would urge his followers to remain calm during a prolonged vote-counting period after the election, if the winner were unclear.

I am urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully because that is what has to happen, I am urging them to do it, Trump said. I hope its going to be a fair election, and if its a fair election, I am 100 percent on board, but if I see tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated, I cant go along with that.

Thiswasnt the first time Trumphas said he wants to recruit poll watchers to monitor the vote. Andto some, the image of thousands of Trump supporters crowding into polling places to monitor voters looks like voter intimidation, a practice long used in the U.S. by political parties to suppress one sides vote and affect an elections outcome.

In thehistory of voter suppressionin the U.S. including attempts to stopBlackandLatino peoplefrom voting Republican tactics in the 1981 New Jersey gubernatorial race are worth highlighting. That incident sparked a court order a consent decree forbidding the GOP from using a variety of voter intimidation methods, including armed poll watchers.

The 2020 presidential election will be the first in nearly 40 years conducted without the protections afforded by that decree.

In November 1981, voters in several cities saw posters at polling places printed in bright red letters. WARNING, they read. This area is being patrolled bythe National Ballot Security Task Force.

And voters soon encountered the patrols themselves. About 200 were deployed statewide, many of them uniformed and carrying guns.

In Trenton, patrol members asked a Black voter for her registration card and turned her away when she didnt produce it. Latino voters were similarly prevented from voting in Vineland, while in Newark some voters were physically chased from the polls by patrolmen, one of whom warned a poll worker not to stay at her post after dark. Similar scenes played out in at least two other cities, Camden and Atlantic City.

Weeks later, after a recount, RepublicanThomas Keanwon the election by fewer than 1,800 votes.

Democrats, however, soon won a significant victory. With local civil rights activists, they discovered that the ballot security operation was a joint project of the state and national Republican committees. They filed suit in December 1981,charging Republicans with efforts to intimidate, threaten and coerceduly qualified black and Hispanic voters.

In November 1982, the case was settled when theRepublican committees signed a federal consent decree a court order applicable to activities anywhere in the U.S. agreeing not to use race in selecting targets for ballot security activities and to refrain from deploying armed poll watchers.

That orderexpired in 2018after Democrats failed to convince a judge to renew it.

Asa professorwho teaches andwritesabout New Jersey history, Im alarmed by the expiration because I know that Republicans in 1981 relied not only on armed poll watchers but also on a history of white vigilantism and intimidation in the Garden State. These issuesresonatetoday in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement and continued GOP attempts tosuppress the 2020 votein numerous states.

Considered an early referendum on Ronald Reagans presidency, New Jerseys 1981 gubernatorial race held special meaning for Republicans nationwide. Kean withcampaign manager Roger Stoneat the helm promised corporate tax cuts and relied heavily on Reagans endorsement.

To secure victory, state and national Republican party officials devised a project they claimed would prevent Democratic cheating at the polls.

In the summer of 1981, the Republican National Committee sent an operative named John A. Kelly to New Jersey to run the ballot security effort. Kelly had first been hired by the Republican National Committee in 1980 to work in the Reagan campaign, and he served as one of theRNCs liaisons to the Reagan White House.

Later, after he was revealed as the organizer of the National Ballot Security Task Force and after The New York Times discovered that he hadlied about graduating from Notre Dame and had been arrested for impersonating a police officer Republicans distanced themselves from him.

In August 1981, under the guise of the National Ballot Security Task Force, Kelly sent about 200,000 letters marked return to sender to voters in heavily Black and Latino districts. Those whose letters were returned had their names added to a list of voters to be challenged at the polls on Election Day, a tactic known asvoter caging.

In the Newark area, Kelly produced a list of 20,000 voters whom he deemed potentially fraudulent. He then hired local operatives to organize patrols, ostensibly to keep such fraud at bay. To run the Newark operation, he hired Anthony Imperiale.

Imperiale, in turn, hired off-duty police officers and employees of his private business, the Imperiale Security Police, to patrol voting sites in the city.

The gun-toting, barrel-chested former Marine had first adopted the security role duringNewarks 1967 uprising five days of protests and a deadly occupation of the city by police and the National Guard following the police beating of a Black cab driver. During the uprising, Imperiale organized patrols of his predominantly white neighborhood to keep the riots out.

Soon, Imperiale became a hero of white backlash politics. Hisopposition to police reformearned him widespread support from law enforcement. And hisfight against Black housing developmentin Newarks North Ward delighted many of his neighbors. By the end of the 1970s, Hollywood wasmaking a moviebased on his activities.

After serving as an independent in both houses of the state legislature,Imperiale became a Republican in 1979. Two years later, he campaigned with Kean. Once in office, the new governor named Imperiale director of a new one-man state Office of Community Safety an appointment often interpreted as reward for Imperiales leadership of the ballot efforts in Newark, but stymied whenDemocrats refused to fund the position.

Despite Keans slim margin of victory, Democrats at the time were careful not to claim that Republican voter suppression efforts had decided the election. (In 2016, the formerDemocratic candidate claimed they did indeed make the difference.)

Rather, the state and national Democratic committees brought suit against the Republican National Committee to ensure it couldnt again use such methods anywhere. For nearly 40 years throughamendmentsandchallenges the resulting consent decreehelped curtailvoter suppression tactics.

Since the decrees expiration in 2018, Republicans have ramped up theirrecruitment of poll watchersfor the 2020 presidential election. Last November, Trump campaign lawyer Justin Clark calling the decrees absence a huge, huge, huge, huge deal for the party promised a larger, better-funded and more aggressive program of Election Day operations.

The Trump campaign is claiming, as Republicans did in 1981, that Democrats will be up to their old dirty tricks and has vowed to cover every polling place in the country with workers to ensure an honest election and reelect the president.

This November, Republican tactics in 1981 are worth remembering. They demonstrate that the safeguarding of polling places from supposedly fraudulent voters and of public places from Black bodies share not only a logic. They also share a history.

Mark Krasovic is an associate professor of history and American studies at Rutgers University Newark. This was first published by The Conversation Trumps encouragement of GOP ballot watchers echoes an old tactic of voterintimidation.

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Trump wants poll watchers -- This is what happened after New Jersey Republicans used them to intimidate voters in 1981 - MarketWatch