Texas Bars DOJ Election Monitors From Polling Sites

Federal election monitors are being told to stay away from polling locations in Texas.

"Secretary [Jane] Nelson confirms in a letter to the @TheJusticeDept that federal monitors are not permitted in Texas polling locations under state law," the official account for the Texas secretary of state said in a post on X.

"Texans can be confident in the state's strong measures to ensure election integrity."

The Department of Justice Friday said it would send election monitors to 86 jurisdictions in 27 states on Tuesday, the most in two decades and a 49% increase from 2020.

Florida and Missouri banned federal monitors from polling sites in the 2022 midterms and Florida Secretary of State Cory Byrd, a Republican, said he would ban federal authorities from entering polling sites in the four counties from his state.

The presence of "federal law enforcement inside polling places would be counterproductive and could undermine confidence in the election," he wrote, adding that his office plans to send state monitors to polling sites in the same counties.

"These monitors will ensure that there is no interference with the voting process," Byrd wrote to the DOJ.

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft also pushed back, telling the DOJ state law "vigorously restricts" who can enter polling sites.

"The unnecessary and seemingly unlawful intrusion of the same partisan agency that sued Alabama and Virginia to let noncitizens vote in elections is wrong," Ashcroft said. "The DOJ is unwanted, not needed, and has provided no legal basis to interfere with our elections."

Katherine Culliton-González, a former Justice Department voting rights lawyer who now serves as chief policy counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told The Washington Post it was "very promising and very much needed that the number of jurisdictions [being monitored] has increased."

Monitors "go to places where there is a potential for problems," she said. "Normally, monitors have a very calming effect."

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