I believe they should. That doesn't mean that I don't think your sources suffer from fear of the black menace coupled with a bad case of hyperbole.
And, I don't find these guys particularly menacing. They certainly wouldn't stop me from voting. They look like underpaid rent-a-cops. The one on the left probably only weighs about 120 lbs and might be toppled in a stiff wind.
They are BLACK, though. And black people ARE very scary. :lamo Just by virtue of being black, that is.
To me its got nothing to do with them being black. If they were wearing similar things, white, and skin heads holding a club out in their hand while standing in front of a polling place when there's a candidate on that's being heralded by the fringe minority as some kind of savior to their views I'd have the same feeling towards them...that they're rather intimidating out front of a voting place.
I'd feel the same way as well whether they had a gun out in their hand, a club, a knife, or any weapon in their hand. There's a large difference between a weapon on a person and a weapon being weilded in hand.
The entire basis of your argument, which is frankly comes off as ignorant to me, is that people are reacting the way they are to these people in regards to "intimidation" because "They're black". Yet for that to be the reason for it then why is there not a wide spread panic every year when elections happen and...shock and awe....BLACK people go and vote. Sometimes they even go to vote and they're standing right next to white people! My god, there must be a panic forming because everyone that thinks these guys were attempting voter intimidation must be doing it because they're black men and black men are intimidating.
No, "Black men" aren't intimidating. These particular black men, with a weapon in hand, with a look that suggests a rather outside of the mainstream point of view, loitering right in front of a polling place during an election with strong racial implications and where race was a routine hot button issue pushed by both sides.
Know what else would be intimidating? White men, with a weapon in hand, with a look that suggests a rather outside of the mainstream point of view, loitering right outside of a polling place during an election where a candidate pushing for the repeal of affirmative action or the civil rights act. Would that mean WHITE PEOPLE! are intimidating? No, it would mean in that situation those specific white people were intimidating.
Just as in this situtation it appears these men happened to be attempting to be intimidating.