Texas Tribune: Texas tells U.S. Justice Department that federal election monitors aren’t allowed in polling places.
Texas’ top elections official told the U.S. Department of Justice on Friday its election monitors aren’t permitted in the state’s polling places after the federal agency announced plans to dispatch monitors to eight counties on Election Day to ensure compliance with federal voting rights laws.
The Justice Department regularly sends monitors across the country to keep an eye out for potential voting rights violations during major elections. The agency said monitors would be on the ground in 86 jurisdictions in 27 states. The Texas counties are Atascosa, Bexar, Dallas, Frio, Harris, Hays, Palo Pinto and Waller counties.
Late Friday evening, Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson told the federal agency that its election monitors aren’t among those allowed inside Texas polling places or in central locations where ballots are counted under state law. Election Day is Tuesday.
A spokesperson from her office said that there is nothing Nelson can do to change who is allowed in a polling place and that they are merely following the law. The Texas Election Code lists who is authorized to be inside a polling place, and does not include federal election monitors. Election monitors are still allowed outside polling places.
“Rest assured that Texas has robust processes and procedures in place to ensure that eligible voters may participate in a free and fair election,” Nelson wrote to a DOJ official Friday evening.
[…]
For decades, the Justice Department has dispersed election monitors across the country to observe procedures in polling sites and at places where ballots are counted. That was a power granted to the federal government under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed discriminatory voting practices and sought to equalize voting access. After the U.S. Supreme Court gutted parts of the law years ago, the agency now must get permission from state and local jurisdictions to be present or get a court order.
My original angle on this post was to wonder what the rules are supposed to be. It wasn’t until I copied this last paragraph that I realized I had the answer already. Would have been nice to maybe move that up a bit, but at least it was there. I assume that the DOJ had some reason for doing this, though per the story none has been publicly given. I’d like to see them seek a court order, though that could end up being an opportunity for the Fifth Circuit or SCOTUS to commit a last-minute atrocity. Maybe just hops for the best at this point, I dunno. And then keep pushing for a revised Voting Rights Act for the future.
UPDATE: That’s that.
The U.S. Department of Justice has agreed not to send federal monitors to Texas polling places after Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a request to block the department from monitoring the state’s election. As part of the agreement, the state has withdrawn its request to block the department from monitoring the election process.
Paxton had filed the request on Monday, hours before the Election Day, arguing state’s law doesn’t allow DOJ monitors in polling places. The Texas Tribune reported that, as part of the agreement, the DOJ’s monitors will remain outside in eight Texas counties and at least 100 feet away from polling and central count locations.
[…]
Paxton argued the DOJ did not have the authority to dispatch the election monitors, as the state law only gives a list of 15 categories of people allowed in polling locations, including voters and minors accompanied by voters, state and local election officials, and poll watchers who have completed state mandated training.
Despite this, Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Rights Project and a previous Democrat candidate running against Paxton for attorney general in 2022, told the Houston Chronicle that while law does not expressly bar federal monitors for entering polling places, it does allow “a person whose presence has been authorized by the presiding judge in accordance with this code.”
Garza added that election judges could choose to greenlight federal monitors at their polling locations.
OK then.
The real reason the VRA has not been renewed is that if you required DOJ supervision of elections for cities and counties using the 1960s formula which was struck down by the US Supreme Court as out of date, lots of areas in Northern states would have to have all their voting site locations and laws and redistricting maps pre-approved by the Department of Justice. The formula was based on voter turnout as a percentage of voting age population, and many Southern jurisdictions now have higher turnout in comparison to Northern ones.
Mainstream, I assume by “real reason” you meant “pretext.” The “real reason” was exactly what any rational person thinks it was.
I would like to think that I am rational. I doubt there are many Democrat congress members from Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc. who would like for their election administrators to have to ask for pre-approval permission from DOJ every time they want to move a voting site, change their city council boundaries, change hours for early voting. If I am irrationally wrong, maybe those congress members would vote to apply the coverage formula nationwide, even to themselves.
If it is Republican enacted or destroyed, it is probably rational and racist/bigotry.