AILSA CHANG, HOST:
This election, the Republican Party plans to have tens of thousands of poll watchers in key battleground states. They say it's to help maintain the integrity of the election. Democrats plan to have election observers as well, but some people worry that the large number of poll watchers could intimidate or confuse some voters and potentially disrupt the vote.
Challenging voters at the polls has been a partisan strategy used for decades. Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei, from NPR's history podcast Throughline, bring us the story of how a future Supreme Court justice helped launch a voter challenge program in Phoenix, Arizona, that soon went national.
RUND ABDELFATAH, BYLINE: Before he was nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court, William Rehnquist moved to Arizona to start practicing law. It was the late 1950s.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
JOHN A. JENKINS: He's already coming to Phoenix with his conservative philosophy fully baked.
RUND ABDELFATAH: This is John A. Jenkins. He wrote a book called "The Partisan: The Life of William Rehnquist."
JENKINS: He is deeply ideological.
RUND ABDELFATAH: William Rehnquist grew up in an all-white suburb of Milwaukee. He enlisted in the Army during World War II and served until the war ended. Then he came back, got his law degree from Stanford, where he graduated first in his class, and clerked for a Supreme Court justice.
JENKINS: So he just had a supreme self-confidence.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RAMTIN ARABLOUEI, BYLINE: Like many other cities across the country at that time, Phoenix was reckoning with Jim Crow laws and an emerging civil rights movement, and Rehnquist was part of a new conservative voice that pushed back. When the Phoenix city council passed an antidiscrimination ordinance, he wrote a letter to the editor and spoke at the meeting.
JENKINS: He got noticed, and he was effective.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RAMTIN ARABLOUEI: Rehnquist was encouraged to get involved with politics, and that meant extra scrutiny of voters in precincts that leaned Democrat. Republicans believed that many of them were voting illegally.
RUND ABDELFATAH: Here's a quote from an article in the Arizona Republic.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: We in the Republican Party think that it is un-American for persons to attempt to vote in violation of the law. We are surprised that your party does not desire to manifest the same interest in correcting illegal voting procedures.
RAMTIN ARABLOUEI: Republicans said some people used vacant lots to register their addresses or they hadn't lived in Arizona long enough to vote. They would also send mailers to Democratic precincts. If the mail got kicked back, they would challenge those potential voters at the polls.
(CROSSTALK)
RUND ABDELFATAH: Which brings us to November 6, 1962, Election Day. Voters lined up at an elementary school named after civil rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune. The precinct was predominantly Hispanic and Black. Later, witnesses would allege Rehnquist was there, too.
JENKINS: The allegation was that he was showing up himself at polling places and challenging voters.
RAMTIN ARABLOUEI: Under Arizona law, the different political parties were allowed to send delegates to the polls to challenge voters who they suspected were voting illegally. But election officials were the sole judges of a voter's qualification. So the question was, were Arizona Republicans going too far to challenge voters?
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BARRY GOLDWATER: Together, we will win.
(CHEERING)
RUND ABDELFATAH: What was happening in Phoenix, Arizona, was a field test for something much bigger, an operation that would be launched two years later, during a presidential election.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GOLDWATER: And you and I are going to fight for the goodness of our land. Thank you.
(CHEERING)
RUND ABDELFATAH: In 1964, Barry Goldwater ran for president against Lyndon Baines Johnson. He and Rehnquist were both part of the so-called Arizona Mafia, a small Republican political powerhouse.
RAMTIN ARABLOUEI: The momentum was in the Democrats' favor heading into the election, but the National Republican Party had a plan.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: You may have heard of something called Operation Eagle Eye.
RAMTIN ARABLOUEI: This is a campaign ad that Democrats released before the 1964 election.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Well, a better name for it would be Operation Evil Eye.
RAMTIN ARABLOUEI: Republicans had already claimed that the 1960 election, four years earlier, was stolen. Operation Eagle Eye was the response. It was the same blueprint Rehnquist and his Republican colleagues were accused of using in Phoenix. So on the day of the 1964 presidential election, The New York Times reported Republican officials saying 100,000 trained Republican workers were in 35 key cities across the country. Operation Eagle Eye was underway.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Voters by the hundreds, perplexed and downright scared, were snarled yesterday in partisan poll-watching. Miami Herald.
(SOUNDBITE OF TELEPHONE RINGING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Mexicans and Negroes complained to elections officials that they had received anonymous phone calls warning them of challenges at the polls. The New York Times.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: I hope you will not be one of its victims.
RAMTIN ARABLOUEI: Just to be clear, Operation Eagle Eye did not deliver Goldwater to the presidency.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RUND ABDELFATAH: Goldwater loses, big time.
RAMTIN ARABLOUEI: And the story about Rehnquist challenging voters in Phoenix that went national with Operation Eagle Eye has become like many stories about mass voter challenges across the country.
CHANG: Hosts Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei - you can hear the whole episode on NPR's Throughline podcast. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.