LAS VEGAS — The Latest on a U.S. District Court hearing in Las Vegas on a Democratic party lawsuit claiming voter intimidation by Nevada Republicans and the Donald Trump campaign (all times local):

A federal judge in Las Vegas made no immediate ruling on a request from Democrats that he issue a restraining order telling Donald Trump supporters not to harass voters at polls in Nevada next Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware heard more than three hours of arguments Wednesday from lawyers for the Democratic Party and an attorney for the Nevada Republican Party and Trump campaign.

The judge says he wants to make a decision by the weekend.

First, he wants sworn testimony Thursday from a Trump campaign official who heads Nevada poll-watcher training about whether people are being fully told the state laws they have to follow.

The Nevada lawsuit is one of four filed in states that include Arizona, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Democrats in Nevada are citing post-Civil War voter intimidation by the Ku Klux Klan in a bid to get a federal judge in Las Vegas to order Donald Trump supporters not to harass voters at polls next Tuesday.

Documents filed ahead of a Wednesday court hearing accuse the Nevada Republican Party, the Trump campaign, Roger Stone and his group called "Stop the Steal" of "vigilante voter intimidation" in Nevada, Arizona, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Attorneys for the Democratic Party want U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware in Las Vegas to issue a temporary restraining order to GOP supporters.

The request says Stone and Stop the Steal Inc. want Trump supporters to participate in "exit polling" targeting nine Democratic-leaning cities with large non-white populations, including Las Vegas.

The Nevada hearing is the first in the four states. Another is set Thursday in Phoenix.</s>Democrats in Nevada are citing post-Civil War voter intimidation by the Ku Klux Klan in a bid to get a federal judge in Las Vegas to order Donald Trump supporters not to harass voters at polls next Tuesday.

Documents filed ahead of a Wednesday court hearing accuse the Nevada Republican Party, the Trump campaign, Roger Stone and his group called "Stop the Steal" of "vigilante voter intimidation" in Nevada, Arizona, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Attorneys for the Democratic Party want U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware in Las Vegas to issue a temporary restraining order to GOP supporters.

The request says Stone and Stop the Steal Inc. want Trump supporters to participate in "exit polling" targeting nine Democratic-leaning cities with large non-white populations, including Las Vegas.

The Nevada hearing is the first in the four states. Another is set Thursday in Phoenix.</s>COLUMBUS – Democrats are accusing Republicans and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign of conspiring to intimidate voters in at least four states just days ahead of the election.

In each lawsuit, the state’s Democratic party is seeking court action to preemptively block potential voter harassment or intimidation from Republican poll watchers or other observers.

The lawsuits were filed beginning Sunday in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona against Trump’s campaign, each state’s Republican party and GOP operative Roger Stone, who runs the group “Stop the Steal.”

Trump has called on his supporters to act as “election observers” in certain areas of the country to help prevent fraud. That has stirred fears of voter intimidation and confrontations at the polls.

In a federal lawsuit filed in Cleveland, the Ohio Democratic Party accused Trump and Republicans of conspiring to threaten, intimidate and prevent minority voters from casting ballots in the perennial battleground state. The complaint cited comments Trump has made at rallies in Ohio and elsewhere.

“In the months leading up to the 2016 election, Trump has made an escalating series of statements, often racially tinged, suggesting that his supporters should go to particular precincts on Election Day and intimidate voters,” the Ohio lawsuit alleged.

The state party said that absent court intervention, voters would be subjected to “intimidation, threats, and perhaps even force at the hands of vigilante ‘poll watchers’ and ‘ballot integrity’ volunteers on Election Day.”

Ohio Republican Party spokeswoman Brittany Warner called the lawsuit “a publicity stunt” and said the party is not involved in such voter intimidation. Pennsylvania Republicans called the lawsuit “a desperate effort by the Democrats in the face of eroding support for Hillary Clinton.”

Messages left Monday with Trump’s national and Ohio campaigns were not immediately returned.

In an emailed response, Stone said the lawsuit is without merit. He said his organization is not coordinating with the Trump campaign or any official GOP organizations. Instead, it is partnering with another group called Vote Protectors to conduct exit polls and plans to compare those responses with the voting machine results in 7,000 precincts nationwide.

“We seek only to determine if the election is honestly and fairly conducted and to provide an evidentiary basis for a challenge to the election if that is not the case,” Stone said.

In Arizona, Democrats are seeking a court order to block volunteer GOP poll watchers from harassing or photographing people headed to polling locations.

The lawsuit there said the state Republican Party is essentially an arm of Trump’s campaign and the campaign and its backers have been organizing “citizen journalists” and “poll watchers” to flood minority-heavy polling sites on Nov. 8. But Arizona GOP spokesman Tim Sifert said the party is doing no such thing.

Arizona Democratic Party Chairwoman Alexis Tameron said the party is worried that “rogue actors” will scare off voters.

In Nevada, the lawsuit claimed that Trump supporters have yelled at voters outside Las Vegas-area polling places when they said they were not voting for the Republican nominee. Among other requests, Democrats asked the court to declare that aggressive questioning of voters waiting to cast their ballot or threats of legal or criminal action are illegal.

Nevada Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald said his party has zero tolerance for voter intimidation.</s>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic Party officials sued Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in four battleground states on Monday, seeking to shut down a poll-watching effort they said was designed to harass minority voters in the Nov. 8 election.

In lawsuits filed in federal courts in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and Ohio, Democrats argued that Trump and Republican Party officials were mounting a “campaign of vigilante voter intimidation” that violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act and an 1871 law aimed at the Ku Klux Klan.

“Trump has sought to advance his campaign’s goal of ‘voter suppression’ by using the loudest microphone in the nation to implore his supporters to engage in unlawful intimidation,” the Ohio Democratic Party wrote in a legal filing. Similar language was used in the other lawsuits.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Since August, Trump has urged his supporters to monitor polling locations on Election Day for signs of possible voting fraud, often urging them to keep a close eye on cities like Philadelphia and St. Louis that have high minority populations.

Campaigning in Ohio, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said Trump was hoping to discourage people from participating in the election.

“His whole strategy is to suppress the vote. Lots of noise. Lots of distractions,” Clinton said in Cleveland.

Democrats are also trying to stop the Republican National Committee from working with the Trump campaign or state parties on poll monitoring, arguing in a separate case that a long-standing court order prevents the national party organization from engaging in “ballot security” measures.

In a motion filed on Monday in that case, the RNC said it was not involved in poll watching but was working to support Trump in other areas. “That is evidence of politics, not wrongdoing,” the RNC said.

Many states allow campaigns and political parties to monitor balloting, although they often face restrictions. In Pennsylvania, for example, poll watchers must be formally certified by the local election board and must be registered voters in the county where they are working. The state Republican party has sued to remove those restrictions.

With early voting under way, civil rights groups have said they have heard isolated reports of self-described poll monitors photographing voters and engaging in other intimidating behavior.

Democrats also sued Republican operative Roger Stone, a longtime Trump ally who is organizing an exit-polling effort. Democrats said the true purpose of the project, called Stop the Steal, was to intimidate minority and urban voters.

Stone told Reuters that his project was designed to ensure that electronic voting machines were working properly.

Supporter Hunter Lassus awaits the arrival of U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for a rally at John Marshall High School in Cleveland, Ohio August 17, 2016. REUTERS/Mark Makela

On Stop the Steal’s website, Stone says Clinton’s Democrats “intend to flood the polls with illegals. Liberal enclaves already let illegals vote in their local and state elections and now they want them to vote in the Presidential election.”

Stone said the 1,400 people across the United States who volunteered for the project had been instructed to use neutral language and only approach people after they had voted.

“Since we are only talking to voters after they have voted, how can we be intimidating them?” Stone said.</s>The Nevada State Democratic Party is suing the state Republican Party, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and others over alleged voter intimidation in Nevada and across the nation.

The complaint, filed with the U.S. District Court on Sunday, alleges the Trump campaign, the Nevada Republican Party and one of Trump’s close associates, Roger Stone, and his Stop the Steal super PAC, have violated the Ku Klux Klan and Voting Rights acts through a coordinated voter intimidation campaign.

Details of the lawsuit were first reported by Election Law Blog this morning.

The Ku Klux Klan Act was passed by Congress in 1871, banning conspiracies to intimidate or threaten voters and stop threats and harassment of former slaves and their white supporters by the KKK. The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 to stop any threats or intimidation against voters.

The complaint references a recent report by Bloomberg in which a senior official with the Trump campaign is quoted as saying that the campaign has “three major voter suppression operations under way.”

“While the official discussed communications strategies designed to decrease interests in voting, it has also become clear in recent weeks that Trump has sought to advance his campaign’s goal of ‘voter suppression’ by using the loudest microphone in the nation to implore his supporters to engage in unlawful intimidation at Nevada polling places,” the complaint states.

The filing alleges that “in Nevada, Trump supporters and volunteers for the campaign have harassed and intimidated voters in Clark County.” The complaint cites three alleged instances:
• At an early voting polling site on Lake Mead Boulevard, a Trump supporter allegedly “harassed and intimidated multiple voters ... repeatedly asking voters for whom they were voting, and then yelling at them belligerently and keeping them from entering the voting location when they stated they were not voting for Donald Trump.”
• A poll observer for the Trump campaign was asked to leave the Arroyo Market Square early voting site after allegedly “yelling at voters, accusing voters and poll workers of breaking the law, and talking to voters in line and giving them inaccurate information.”
• At a Nye County polling place, a woman who identified herself as an “an agent and ‘part’ of the RNC conducted ‘exit polling’ of voters and questioned them on their votes within 100 feet of the polling place.”

The document also states that Stone and Stop the Steal are recruiting Trump supporters and “specifically targeting nine Democratic-leaning cities with large minority populations, including Las Vegas” to conduct “exit polling.”

Trump’s Nevada campaign, a spokeswoman for the state Republican Party, and Stop the Steal did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The state Democratic Party is seeking immediate relief, with only eight days until Election Day and with in-person early voting underway.

“Trump’s calls for unlawful intimidation have grown louder and louder, and the conspiracy to harass and threaten voters on Election Day has already resulted in numerous acts that threaten to interfere with the voting rights of registered Nevada voters,” the complaint states.

The complaint asks for the court to prohibit the defendants from “funding, encouraging, or otherwise supporting” poll-watching activities not allowed by Nevada’s election law, monitoring polling places if the monitors do not meet statutory requirements to serve as a poll watcher, and questioning, harassing or taking pictures of voters.

The Nevada complaint is one of several filed across the nation alleging voter intimidation. The state Democratic parties in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Arizona have each filed lawsuits against their respective state Republican parties, the Trump campaign, as well as Stone and Stop the Steal.</s>Democratic Party officials sued Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in four battleground states on Monday, seeking to shut down a poll-watching effort that they said was designed to harass minority voters in the November 8th election.

In lawsuits filed in federal courts in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and Ohio, Democrats argued that Mr Trump and Republican Party officials were mounting a “campaign of vigilante voter intimidation” that violates the 1965 Voting Rights Act and an 1871 law aimed at the Ku Klux Klan.

“Trump has sought to advance his campaign’s goal of ‘voter suppression’ by using the loudest microphone in the nation to implore his supporters to engage in unlawful intimidation,” the Ohio Democratic Party wrote in a legal filing.

Similar language was used in the other lawsuits.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Campaigning in Ohio, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton said Mr Trump was hoping to discourage people from participating in the election.

“His whole strategy is to suppress the vote. Lots of noise. Lots of distractions,” Ms Clinton said in Cleveland.

Since August, Mr Trump has urged his supporters to monitor polling locations on election day for signs of possible voting fraud, often urging them to keep a close eye on cities like Philadelphia and St Louis that have high minority populations.

In a separate lawsuit, Democrats are seeking to stop the national Republican Party from working with the Trump campaign on poll-monitoring, arguing that a longstanding court order prevents the party from engaging in so-called “ballot security” measures.

Many states allow campaigns and political parties to monitor balloting, though they often face restrictions.

In Pennsylvania, for example, poll-watchers must be formally certified by the local election board and must be registered voters in the county where they are working.

The state Republican party has sued to remove these restrictions.

With early voting under way, civil rights groups have said they have heard isolated reports of self-described poll-monitors photographing voters and engaging in other intimidating behaviour.

Democrats also sued Republican operative Roger Stone, a longtime Trump ally who is organising an exit-polling effort.

Democrats said the true purpose of the project, called Stop the Steal, was to intimidate minority voters.

Mr Stone told Reuters that his project was designed to ensure that electronic voting machines were working properly.

On Stop the Steal’s website, Stone says Ms Clinton’s Democrats “intend to flood the polls with illegals.

“Liberal enclaves already let illegals vote in their local and state elections and now they want them to vote in the presidential election.”

Mr Stone said the 1,400 people across the US who have volunteered for the project have been instructed to use neutral language and only approach people after they have voted.

“Since we are only talking to voters after they have voted, how can we be intimidating them?” Mr Stone said.</s>The state Democratic party filed a lawsuit Sunday accusing the Nevada Republican Party and GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump campaign of intimidating voters.

The federal lawsuit, first reported by Election Law Blog’s Rick Hansen, claims that Trump and one of his political advisers, Roger Stone, have conspired to “threaten, intimidate, and thereby prevent minority voters in urban neighborhoods from voting” this year.

The complaint is one of four filed across the country and lands right in the middle of Nevada’s early voting period.

It cites three examples of alleged intimidation in Nevada, including one at an Albertsons grocery store on Lake Mead Boulevard where it claims a Trump supporter yelled “belligerently” at voters who told him they would not be voting for Trump.

Poll workers tried to get the man to leave but said that he had “a right to say anything he wanted to voters,” and the poll workers then called police but the man left before officers arrived, according to the lawsuit.

Similar complaints have been filed in other battleground states Ohio, Pennsylvania and Arizona.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Contact Colton Lochhead at clochhead@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4638. Follow @ColtonLochhead on Twitter.</s>With the bitter election just days away from a seeming conclusion, these lawsuits were part of a flurry of legal action that could alter what voters experience on Election Day and how party officials can approach voters going forward.

The federal lawsuits in four battleground states -- Arizona, Nevada, Ohio and Pennsylvania -- arrived just over a week before Election Day and amid polls showing a tightening campaign between Trump and Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent. In these suits, officials accuse Trump's campaign and his backers of what the Ohio complaint describes as a "coordinated campaign of vigilante voter intimidation."

Trump has repeatedly described the election as "rigged" without offering any evidence, claims that have worried officials preparing for potential unrest or violence on Election Day. Party leaders and officials across the country have also expressed concerns about voter intimidation and problems at the polls.

In the Ohio lawsuit, the state Democratic Party asked a federal judge to stop the Trump campaign, state party officials and a group associated with Trump supporter Roger Stone from sending people not officially appointed as poll watchers to show up at voting locations.

Attorneys for the Ohio Republican Party, the Trump campaign and Stone did not immediately file court documents responding to that suit, but they were ordered to respond by the end of the day Wednesday.

"This is nothing more than a publicity stunt from the Ohio Democratic Party," Brittany Warner, a spokeswoman for the Ohio GOP, said in a statement. "The arguments cited are not at all related to our official operations at the Ohio Republican Party. Republican leadership in Ohio has created opportunities for greater ballot access and in no way would we ever be involved in the intimidation of voters. Our attorneys are working to prepare the appropriate response."

In a statement, Stone called the lawsuit "bogus" and said that his group, Stop the Steal, "is conducting a neutral, scientifically based exit poll" that would only involve interviews after people cast ballots.

"We are not coordinating with the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee or the individual Republican state committees," Stone said. "We are not engaged in poll watching. We seek only to determine if the election is honestly and fairly conducted and to provide an evidentiary basis for a challenge to the election if that is not the case."

The Trump and Clinton campaigns did not respond to requests for comment about the lawsuits, nor did the Republican National Committee or Democratic National Committees.

Voting advocates, who are also expecting some confusion on Election Day due to a wave of stricter election laws still facing litigation, say they are already receiving more calls about problems at polls.

"When people call and tell us they're experiencing something they deem hostile, we take that seriously," said Kristen Clarke, president of Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which has seen increased calls to their offices this election cycle.

Last week, Clarke said, voters in the Tampa Bay area called her group to report Trump supporters screaming at voters using bullhorns outside of a polling site. Video posted by news outlet Pro-Publica showed a Trump supporter on a bullhorn yelling, "How many Syrian refugees, Muslim refugees, are you taking into your home?"

Clarke said her organization complained to authorities, who then ordered the individuals to move farther away from the polling site.

These issues were also likely to continue playing out in court. In another potentially key legal filing this week, a federal judge on Monday ordered the Republican National Committee -- which is still under a consent decree issued in 1982 -- to turn over "all agreements" between the committee and the Trump campaign "regarding voter fraud, ballot security, ballot integrity, poll watching, or poll monitoring."

This case could have huge ramifications on the last-minute strategies of both parties, said election law expert Rick Hasen of the University of California at Irvine.

"That could provide valuable information to democratic party and others in terms of the Trump poll watching plans," Hasen said Tuesday. "So that single discovery order, is probably the biggest election law victory for Democrats in the last month."

While Hasen said he remains most concerned about an Internet-based attack that takes out vital online infrastructure on Election Day, he said he is also still concerned about voter intimidation and rogue Trump supporters getting into confrontations.

But Hasen said that Democrats hoping to extend the consent decree, which restricts the Republican committee's efforts to challenge voters at the polls, would benefit if they can get the Trump campaign and Republican officials on the "on record denying poll watching and intimidation" plans for Election Day if those things wind up happening.

"The 2016 election and the conduct of Trump and [the] RNC on Election Day are going to be very relevant to that question of whether to extend the consent decree," he said.

Millions have already voted, and both campaigns are still making a frantic push toward the finish line. Trump campaign officials say they are "on the offensive everywhere" and are trying to make a push in traditionally Democratic states, while Clinton officials and surrogates are trying to boost turnout in big cities while also seeking to flip Arizona.

In their lawsuits filed earlier this week, Democrats pointed to Trump's repeated suggestions -- offered without evidence -- that the election will be "rigged," his unsubstantiated claims of "large-scale voter fraud" and his calls for supporters to monitor polling places in "certain areas."

Trump has made "an escalating series of statements, often racially tinged, suggesting that his supporters should go to particular precincts on Election Day and intimidate voters," the Ohio lawsuit states. "Trump's exhortations have grown more ominous and specific as the election draws closer."

The lawsuits in all four states, which included similar allegations, cited a Bloomberg Businessweek story that quoted an anonymous Trump official as saying that the campaign had "three major voter suppression operations underway." In the story, the official said that the campaign was seeking to drive down turnout among African-American voters.

In North Carolina, another key venue on Election Day, the state NAACP filed a federal lawsuit Monday saying that three counties -- Beaufort, Moore and Cumberland -- had improperly canceled the registrations of thousands of voters. The state election board said that private citizens, rather than any county officials, had challenged the registrations.</s>COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Democrats are accusing Republicans and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign of conspiring to intimidate voters in at least four key states.

The lawsuits were filed beginning Sunday in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona. The defendants include Trump, the states’ Republican parties and GOP operative Roger Stone, who runs the group “Stop the Steal.”

In a federal lawsuit filed in Cleveland, Democrats accuse Trump and others of conspiring to intimidate voters. The complaint cites comments from Trump rallies in which he urges supporters to “watch” voters. The suit alleges such “vigilante voter intimidation” violates federal law.

An Ohio GOP spokeswoman calls the lawsuit “a publicity stunt” and says it’s not involved in intimidation. Messages left Monday with Trump’s national and Ohio campaigns were not immediately returned.

Stone says in a statement that the lawsuit is without merit and his group is conducting its own exit poll.</s>The Arizona Democratic Party wants a federal judge to block the state's Republican Party from an alleged effort to send out red-shirted Donald Trump supporters to hassle voters on election day.

Exactly how many Trump supporters will heed calls by the Republican presidential candidate or state party to act as polling-place observers or "citizen journalists" isn't clear. But similarly worded federal lawsuits filed by the Democratic Party on Monday in the U.S. District Courts of Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Ohio help the party push back publicly against Trump's claim that the voting system is "rigged" in favor of Hillary Clinton.

Based on the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, the lawsuit filed in Arizona (see below) outlines Trump's tactic of claiming he'll be the target of "voter fraud," and alleges that Florida Republican operative Roger Stone has "amplified Trump's message." Stone uses his website StopTheSteal.org to help Trump promote the idea that undocumented immigrants will engage in widespread illegal voting and that Clinton's side will steal "hundreds" of electoral votes, the suit alleges.

The suit states that Stone has spread the idea that Trump supporters should wear red shirts on election day and engage in operations in minority-heavy areas, drawing more than 2,000 volunteers — including 93 in Arizona — to commit to the idea (at least on the Internet). Stone's leadership is of particular concern, the plaintiff's argue, because he "has a history of engaging in voter intimidation, racist and misogynist hate speech, and incitement to violence."

Robert Graham and Tim Sifert, officials with the state GOP, allegedly have taken their cues from Stone's intimidating program as a way to help motivate Arizona Republicans.

Graham has asserted that "observers" can "follow voters out into the parking lot, ask them questions, take their pictures and photograph their vehicles and license plate" as long as they are at least 75 feet outside of a polling place, the suit states.

Sifert "has similarly encouraged poll watchers to ask purportedly suspicious voters to provide their names, and to 'turn on their phone to take video or pictures'" of the person and a license plate, the suit states. Sifert allegedly boasted that more than 1,000 people have signed up with the state party to be polling-place observers this year, 10 times more than usual.

Neither Sifert nor the state GOP's local lawyer, Tim LaSota, immediately returned a message left by New Times on Tuesday morning.

The suit quotes a would-be observer, interviewed for a recent Boston Globe article, who claimed he'd use "racial profiling" to target Mexicans and "people who can't speak American," and would approach them in voting places to "make them a little bit nervous."

As the suit explains, the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 was designed to stop voter intimidation after the Civil War and provides for damages and judicial relief "if two or more persons conspire to prevent by force, intimidation, or threat," any eligible citizen from voting.

The suit is also based on the federal Voting Rights Act, which prohibits intimidation and threats against voters.

The Democratic Party wants a judge to declare that the GOP's "exit polling" and "citizen journalist" programs are illegal, as are the plans to aggressively question or threaten voters. The court should ban Trump and the GOP from encouraging people to engage in poll-watching activities, "loitering" near a polling place, "questioning, interrogating, or verbally harassing voters or prospective voters," and following voters to take photos or video of them, the suit states.

Attorney Sarah Gonski of Perkins Coie LLP, who's handling the injunction request for the Arizona Democratic Party, did not return a call from New Times.

The party's chair, Alexis Tameron, told the Associated Press that she was worried "rogue actors" would scare off voters. However, she gave a softer comment to New Times on Tuesday morning, saying, "We have every confidence that a record number of Arizonans will make their voices heard in this election, and we are committed to helping them do so. Period."

Arizona U.S. District Judge John Tuchi has scheduled a hearing on the matter for 1:30 p.m. on Thursday.

Read Arizona Democratic Party v. Arizona Republican Party, Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., Roger J. Stone, Jr., and Stop the Steal, Inc.:
Four state Democratic Parties sue the Donald Trump presidential campaign, the state Republican Parties, and "Stop the Steal" group founder Roger Stone for voter intimidation in the states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona.