The US Department of Justice is monitoring polls in 34 jurisdictions in 24 states on Election Day to ensure local compliance with federal voting rights laws, though not all states were willing to play ball with the feds.
Republican politicians in two states refused US Justice Department officials access to voting locations as polls opened for the 2022 midterms on Tuesday.
The monitoring, which occurs regularly on Election Day, comes as civil rights groups and the federal government have raised alarm over potential voter intimidation at some polling places and ballot boxes.
However, Republicans in Florida and Missouri have tried to stop the federal monitors.
Florida’s Secretary of State Cord Byrd told the Justice Department it could not place monitors at the state’s ballot boxes. Jay Ashcroft, the Secretary of State in Missouri, also turned away monitors who sought access to Cole County polling locations.
Brad McVay, the general counsel for Florida’s Department of State, told the Justice Department that allowing their monitors inside polling locations would violate the state’s law.
“Section 102.031(3)(a) of the Florida Statutes lists the people who ‘may enter any polling room or polling placee. Department of Justice personnel are not included on the list,” Mr McVay wrote. “Even if they could qualify as ‘law enforcement’… absent some evidence concerning the need for federal intrusion, or some federal statute that preempts Florida law, the presence of federal law enforcement inside polling places would be counterproductive and could potentially undermine confidence in the election.”
In states where they aren’t rebuffed, monitors will be stationed at polling locations in five counties in Arizona, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, as well as eight cities and towns in Massachusetts and five in Michigan, among others.
The Justice Department – which has regularly deployed monitors in major elections – will also position monitors in battleground states Georgia, Nevada and Ohio, along with 17 others.
“Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Civil Rights Division has regularly monitored elections in the field in jurisdictions around the country to protect the rights of voters,” according to a statement from the Justice Department on 7 November.
The Civil Rights Division “will also take complaints from the public nationwide regarding possible violations of the federal voting rights laws through its call center,” according to the agency.
Monitors will include Civil Rights Division personnel as well as staff from the US Attorney’s offices in respective states.
The Justice Department deployed monitors to 44 jurisdictions in 18 states in 2020.
This year, the agency appears to be bolstering voter protections in states that have faced right-wing threats of election interference, from ballot drop-box “vigilantes” in Arizona to an increase in partisan poll watchers fuelled by baseless voter fraud conspiracy theories.
Officials in Harris County, Texas requested federal election monitors last month after the state’s Republican Texas Secretary of State announced that the office would deploy its own monitors to the county – the third-largest in the US – in a move that Democratic officials feared was “designed to chill voters’ trust in the election process” and “to disrupt and intimidate local election workers.”
In a press briefing last month, US Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Justice Department “will not permit voters to be intimidated” during midterm elections.
“The Justice Department has an obligation to guarantee a free and fair vote by everyone who’s qualified to vote and will not permit voters to be intimidated,” he said.
A pro-democracy organisation founded by former President Jimmy Carter also is monitoring US elections for the first time this November.
The Carter Center has monitored more than 110 elections in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Asia since 198.
The organisation has dispatched monitors in three battleground states – Arizona, Georgia and Michigan– to promote integrity in US elections.
David Carroll, director of the centre’s Democracy Programme, told The Independent that the organisation’s efforts recognised “that the threats to democratic institutions and norms are greater in the United States than in a number of other countries around the world.”
“And it merits close attention and prioritisation by groups like ours that work to advance respect for democracy and democratic principles,” he added.
