A federal judge declined Monday night to prohibit the Justice Department from sending employees from federal law enforcement agencies to monitor polling places.
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton pressed the department during a Monday hearing for more information about why it decided to deploy hundreds more poll monitors and enroll for the first time in that effort workers from the Bureau of Prisons, Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. But he ultimately decided that at this stage the presence of employees from those agencies does not intimidate voters.
“The evidence indicates that the personnel that will work as election monitors will not be armed with firearms, not be in uniform, not carry any insignia of their law enforcement association, and will not be sworn law enforcement officials and therefore will not possess the power to arrest,” Walton, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in his eleventh-hour ruling.
Although the Justice Department has stated that it would have 1,000 poll monitors across the country, it unveiled the specific locations in all states Tuesday morning. The government has clarified in court filings that FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees will not be at the polls.
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The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division took reasonable steps to ensure sworn law enforcement officers wouldn’t be part of the detail monitoring the polls, according to court filings the federal government submitted Monday night and Tuesday morning.
“It is inconceivable that anything could happen at a polling place where a BOP employee serving in a monitoring capacity would be authorized to make an arrest,” a filing from the Justice Department states.
Walton ordered that the Justice Department act to ensure the poll monitors would indeed be administrative workers.
The NAACP sued to block the Justice Department from having any personnel monitoring the polls who work in federal law enforcement agencies. The lawsuit is one of the several legal battles developing ahead of the hotly contested midterm elections.
Despite the court’s refusal to grant the emergency block NAACP sought, the civil rights organization said it views the outcome as a victory.
“We mounted this litigation because voter intimidation remains a problem today and federal law enforcement has no place in our polling sites,” Kristen Clarke, the general counsel for the NAACP, said in a press release. “Through this litigation we have limited DOJ’s poll monitoring activities and our polling places will be absolutely free of federal law enforcement on Election Day.”
Walton also sought reassurances that the department didn’t pick the poll monitor locations based on perceived political leanings of those areas.
“I would hope that within our country that would not be the norm,” Walton said during the hearing, emphasizing that he expected the locations to have been picked randomly.
The department chose where to send the monitors based on the locations of U.S. Attorney Offices and historical practices, including where language access is an issue, according to a Monday evening declaration from Eric Neff, the acting chief of the Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section.
Walton expressed frustration with what he said appeared to be conflicting statements from Justice Department attorney Kathryn Barragan.
Barragan said that the employees from the law enforcement agencies were clerical workers and didn’t have authority to carry out arrests. A declaration the federal government submitted states that the department’s Civil Rights Division does not track the title of the employees who volunteer, but that it has taken appropriate steps to avoid engaging any sworn law enforcement agents.
After a back-and-forth, the judge said that if the federal government had given a false representation of its plans, “somebody is going to pay a price for that.”
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