Republican leaders in some states move to block federal election monitors

The Justice Department’s ability to monitor local jurisdictions for voting rights irregularities on Election Day, already curtailed by the Supreme Court, is facing a new hurdle: opposition from Republicans who are seeking to block federal authorities from polling sites.

The U.S. government has regularly dispatched hundreds of monitors to voting locations in blue, red and swing states, aiming to protect ballot access, discourage improper partisan influence and act as a moderating force on political campaigns.

While the Justice Department has the legal right to request access to polling sites, inflamed partisanship and ideological extremism has contributed to greater resistance to such activities in some GOP-controlled states, legal experts said. Those states have attempted to politicize the process and cast federal monitors as partisans from the Biden administration who cannot be trusted.

Republican leaders in Missouri and Florida, which flatly banned federal monitors in the 2022 midterm elections, said in recent interviews that their positions have not changed and that Justice officials likely would be rebuffed again if they request access to voting locations for Tuesday’s presidential election.

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft (R) accused the Justice Department of using monitors to punish conservative states that have tightened voter identification laws and adopted policies the Biden administration opposes. Drawing from a state law that does not specifically list federal monitors as permitted to enter polling sites, he accused the Justice Department of overstepping its authority.

“This certainly has become politicized,” said Ashcroft, whose father John Ashcroft led the Justice Department as attorney general during the administration of President George W. Bush. “The Department of Justice lied when they came in and used pretenses to try to bully their way in when they knew what they were doing was not legal.”

In 2022, federal authorities sought access to polling sites in Cole County, Missouri, home of the state capital of Jefferson City, citing complaints that the county lacked adequate voting machines for disabled people. Ashcroft, who rejected those complaints as untrue, said federal monitors who showed up on Election Day were forced to remain outside in public spaces.

In Florida, Secretary of State Cord Byrd (R) said Justice officials in 2022 failed to provide a valid reason for trying to enter polling sites in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, prompting him and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to rebuff their requests. A spokesman for Byrd’s office said this month that state law does not explicitly permit federal monitors to enter voting locations.

Justice Department officials declined to comment on specific disputes. The agency typically discloses the full list of jurisdictions that will be subject to federal monitors a day or two before the election.

The department “has long monitored elections in jurisdictions around the country to protect the rights of voters,” spokeswoman Aryele Bradford said in a statement. “We will continue to use every tool at our disposal to enforce the federal voting rights laws and ensure that all eligible voters are able to vote and have their vote counted, including by deploying monitors wherever we deem appropriate.”

Former Justice Department officials said Republicans are attempting to cast doubt on what has for decades been considered a nonpartisan approach for safeguarding poll access. Monitors aim to be as unobtrusive as possible, the former officials said, raising any concerns about potential election law violations with local officials and reporting broader observations about election operations to U.S. attorney’s offices and the Justice Department’s civil rights division.

Bradley Heard, a voting rights lawyer at the Justice Department from 2012 to 2022, said attempts to discredit or ban federal monitors are part of a “troubling trend.”

“It’s a cynical view that kind of goes along with election denialism and has stirred up seeds of doubt in the electoral process itself,” said Heard, now the deputy legal director of voting rights at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Justice Department has dispatched government officials into polling sites to ensure fair ballot access for vulnerable populations - including racial minorities, disabled people and those with limited English-language ability - and protect against unlawful partisan influence. The monitors visit dozens of jurisdictions, selected based on factors that include requests from local officials, federal court settlements and areas with fast-changing demographics.

In 2022, federal monitors visited 64 jurisdictions in 24 states, including California, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia - an increase of about 45 percent from 2020, when the Trump administration department dispatched monitors to 44 jurisdictions in 18 states.

That year, most of the federal monitors remained outside polling sites due to the coronavirus pandemic. After the election, outgoing president Donald Trump falsely claimed to have defeated Joe Biden, advancing baseless conspiracy theories of election interference and fraud that helped lead to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump is also the Republican nominee in this year’s election.

On Tuesday, Glenn D. Magpantay, the head of the U.S. Commission for Civil Rights, called on the Justice Department to send election monitors to Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Massachusetts, citing past instances of disenfranchisement and intimidation of minority voters.

Two weeks ago, Justice officials said they would monitor voting in Portage County, Ohio, after receiving complaints of voter intimidation related to social media messages by the county sheriff urging residents to write down the addresses of people displaying yard signs for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) said his office is working with Portage County’s elections board to ensure the honesty and accuracy of the results. “We take the integrity of Ohio’s elections very seriously,” he said in a statement. A spokesman for LaRose’s office did not respond to questions about whether the state supports granting federal monitors access inside polling sites.

Some Republican-led states, while stopping short of declaring an outright ban on monitors, have made clear that federal requests for access will be viewed skeptically.

In Arkansas, Sam Dubke, a spokesman for Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R), said the first-term governor “will not permit the Department of Justice to improperly intimidate or unduly influence Arkansas voters, which would be a violation of state law.”

Legal experts said the federal government lost significant legal recourse in 2013, when the Supreme Court struck down key provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The court eliminated the federal government’s preclearance authority, which required nine states and dozens of counties with a history of voter discrimination, mostly in the South, to request permission to change voting regulations.

The ruling also meant the Justice Department needed a court order or the express cooperation from state and local officials to enter polling sites.

Since then, the number of federal observers has dropped significantly, said Katherine Culliton-González, a former Justice Department monitor and former Biden administration official. Efforts by Republicans to marginalize monitors could make the situation worse, she said.

“I don’t understand why they are not allowing that type of transparency,” said Culliton-González, now the chief policy counsel at the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The rising resistance to the federal government’s role comes as state authorities have increased poll monitoring, while political campaigns and outside interest groups have recruited volunteers to keep watch outside voting sites. In some cases, these poll watchers have been accused of harassing election workers and voters.

Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson (R) said her office will deploy a record number of state monitors to voting locations on Tuesday, including an “enhanced presence” in Democratic-leaning Harris County, a jurisdiction that includes Houston and was the focus of baseless election fraud accusations in 2020.

The GOP-controlled Texas legislature last year eliminated Harris County’s elections administrator, a move Democrats unsuccessfully sought to block in court. Texas state auditors faulted the county for election lapses in 2021 and 2022, including a failure to adequately train poll workers and properly maintain voter rolls.

In an October letter to the Justice Department, more than 60 Texas Democrats expressed fears that the state was targeting Democrats and called for federal election monitors in Harris County and the state’s four other most-populous jurisdictions. Those who signed the letter included U.S. Rep. Colin Allred (D), who is challenging incumbent U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R) in what appears to be a tight race.

“Having federal monitors on the ground is incredibly important to the extent that there has been broken trust between the state and our county,” said Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee (D), who also signed the letter. “There’s got to be an objective third party.”

Alicia Pierce, a spokeswoman for Nelson’s office, said federal officials are not allowed inside voting sites because “there is no mechanism under state law to authorize their presence.”

State Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R), author of the bill that eliminated Harris County’s elections administrator, noted that the legislation shifted management of local elections to County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth, a Democrat. Bettencourt said he was open to maintaining the status quo in the county if federal monitors have been admitted in the past, but he added that state laws aim to limit the number of nonvoters inside polling places to protect against electioneering.

“If the DOJ people are not on the list,” he said, “they’re not on the list.”