But Brad McVay, the Florida State Department’s chief attorney, said in a letter issued late Monday that these monitors would not be allowed inside polling stations under Florida law.
McVay said the Florida secretary of state, overseen by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, would instead send its own monitors to those three counties, which are among the most Democratic-leaning counties in Florida.
“Florida law lists people who are ’employed at a polling place or at a polling place,'” McVay wrote. “The Department of Justice officials are not on the list.”
The Justice Department said Tuesday it has received a letter from the DeSantis administration and has deployed election observers outside polling places in Florida.
Florida law has exceptions that allow law enforcement to enter polling places, but McVay said Justice Department observers are ineligible.
“Without some evidence of the need for federal intervention, or federal legislation that preempts Florida law, the presence of federal law enforcement within polling places can be counterproductive and undermine confidence in the election. There is a possibility,” writes McVay.
“No counties are currently subject to federal consent orders related to elections,” McVay added. “No county has been charged with violating the rights of language, racial minorities, the elderly or people with disabilities.”
The Justice Department said in a news release announcing the monitoring locations that it had been monitoring local election procedures across the country since 1965.
Republicans have launched an ongoing campaign against allegations of voter fraud over the past two years, despite scant evidence of fraud in the 2020 election.
Election officials in battleground states are expecting delayed results and a protracted battle when polls close Tuesday night.
Separately, Missouri officials on Friday rejected the Justice Department’s request to conduct regular inspections under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Voting Rights Act at polling places on Election Day. Secretary of State Ashcroft (Republican) reiterated that stance at Monday’s meeting.
He told The Washington Post that the Justice Department’s presence amounted to a bid to “spoil local election officials” so they could “intimidate and suppress voters.”
Ashcroft and Cole County Clerks Steve Korsmeyer, a Republican, told federal officials they would not be allowed to observe polling places on Tuesday. On Tuesday, Justice Department observers were stationed outside a polling place in Cole County, home to the state capital, Jefferson.
“This is not the Voting Rights Act. This is the Americans with Disabilities Act. What’s next? Give me a break,” Ashcroft said in a telephone interview.
He compared Justice Department officials in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri to “jackboot thugs” and armed individuals in Arizona patrolling ballot drop boxes.
“I think there are already lawsuits all over the country over individuals around polling places,” Ashcroft said. “And they were told to stay away from them because they could intimidate voters.” The last time a Justice Department official observed the Missouri election was in St. Louis in 2016. It was a polling station.
An FBI special agent who serves as an election crimes coordinator will also work in the agency’s 56 field offices to receive vote-related complaints from the public, according to the Justice Department. Officials from the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division also operate a hotline throughout Election Day, answering calls from people who discover possible violations of federal voting rights laws.
