The Trump administration is sending Department of Justice election monitors to all 50 states for the first time, but they won’t be allowed to enter polling sites in several cities and counties.
Virginia’s Prince William County, Arkansas’ Pulaski County and Minnesota’s Hennepin and Ramsey counties — home to the state’s “Twin Cities” of Minneapolis and St. Paul — are among the jurisdictions that have denied the department’s request for access ahead of Election Day, saying that state law requires them to remain a certain distance away from the entrance to polling sites.
“Federal monitors may be at polling places in Hennepin County but they may not be IN the polling place,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty wrote in a statement Monday. “They need to be 100 feet away just like any other member of the public who is not there to vote.”
Hennepin and Ramsey counties also denied the Justice Department’s observers access to polling sites during the state’s primary elections in August.
Trending
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon plans to examine the DOJ’s election teams and “monitor the monitors,” but he told CBS News the federal observers who came to the state during the primary had “abided by all applicable laws and rules.”
Laws in a number of states, including Minnesota, Colorado and Arkansas, require unauthorized individuals, including federal observers, to remain 100 feet away from polling locations. Virginia’s statutes require only a 40-foot buffer zone.
The department said it plans to comply with all state rules that deny monitors from directly accessing polling sites, DOJ spokesperson Kiersten Pels told The Washington Sun.
“State or local approval is not required for Department monitoring,” Pels said. “However, Department monitors follow the state and local laws and rules that govern polling locations, and every monitor is trained on the rules for their assigned jurisdiction.”
“So no, they will not enter polling sites in violation of a state law,” she added. “They will remain at a distance, as required.”
The DOJ has sent election monitors to polling locations in past election cycles, but the poll-watching efforts under President Donald Trump have ramped up this year. The department plans to deploy 1,000 monitors across the country Tuesday, with Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, describing the push as the “largest monitoring effort in DOJ history.”
Upon denying access, county officials typically cite state laws that will require the DOJ’s election monitors to stay a certain distance away from polling sites.
“Unauthorized individuals, including federal monitors, must keep a distance of 100 feet from the building in which a polling place is located,” Ramsey County wrote on its website.
Prince William County Registrar Eric Olsen told the DOJ in an email denying their request for access that he “cannot be confident the observers sent will have the training, temperament, and expertise to meet this artificial goal,” the Prince William Times reported Thursday.
Democrats have been sounding the alarm about the DOJ’s monitors ahead of Election Day. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California) announced earlier this month that more than 100 trained Senate Democratic staff members would be deployed across nine states as “official congressional election observers.”
“Donald Trump has made clear that he wants to ‘take over the voting’ in state-run elections. Election interference is unconstitutional and illegal and Congress will be watching,” Padilla said.
Author
