The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association is urging lawmen to form posses, seize voting machines and investigate baseless claims of voter fraud.
A conference for a far-right sheriffs group this week drew a parade of felons, disgraced politicians, election deniers, conspiracy theorists and, in the end, a few sheriffs.
The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, or CSPOA, met in Las Vegas’ Ahern Luxury Boutique Hotel conference center to publicly counter reports of extremism within the group and set a course for the coming election — one that involves sheriffs’ investigating what they claim, despite a lack of evidence, is rampant voter fraud.
The group sees sheriffs as the highest authority in the U.S., more powerful than the federal government, and it wants these county officers to form posses to patrol polling places, seize voting machines and investigate the Democrats and foreign nations behind what they claim is a criminal effort to rig the vote by flooding the country with immigrants who vote illegally.
Critics of the group — including voting rights advocates and extremism researchers — fear the CSPOA’s new focus will amount to interference and legitimize disinformation about U.S. elections.
Sheriffs may have been the highest authority like 200 years ago. This isn’t the Wild West anymore. I don’t understand where they get that mentality that they feel they are above the Federal Government.
They’re not the brightest of sparks but the secret ingredient is fascism.
It’s like the Sovereign Citizen movement but for cops, fundamentally it’s pure nonsense spawned from motivated reasoning by profoundly ignorant people out of a desire for power.
They just don’t want to accept any authority, period. When the Bundy militia took over a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, they claimed that sheriffs superseded the federal government. So when a local sheriff met with them and told them to leave, they of course agreed to disagree and just ignored him.