(Picture credit Nebraska Secretary of State)
Nebraska has become the latest on a growing list of Midwest states that will see election monitors from the Department of Justice present on Election Day. As first reported by Nebraska Public Media, the Douglas County Election Commission has confirmed that two DOJ monitors will be present at Douglas County polling places on Election Day, though it did not share at which locations.
DOJ monitors observe and report suspected violations of federal law and have been commonplace for the department since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Their confirmed presence in Douglas County on Tuesday will be the first confirmed appearance in Nebraska since the Obama Administration.
Douglas and Colfax counties played host to monitors in 2014 amid civil rights concerns. According to Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ Civil Rights Division (CRD) Harmeet Dhillon, the Trump Administration’s DOJ has dispatched “approximately one thousand” monitors and personnel nationwide amid ongoing concern with election integrity.
In response to Democratic concerns over potential FBI or ICE agents at polling locations, the Civil Rights Division said no such agents were detailed to the DOJ. The fact was made public in a widely reported October 28 declaration by Chief Eric Neff, Acting Chief of the DOJ-CRD Voting Section, during an unsuccessful NAACP effort to secure a temporary restraining order against the department’s mobilization.
Monitors will include DOJ employees in addition to detailees from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and one singular detailee from Customs and Border Protection.
The United States Attorney’s Office for Nebraska recently announced in coordination with the DOJ-CRD that federal oversight “will remain active throughout the early voting period” with specific reference to polling locations and drop boxes.
Nebraska becomes the latest confirmed state to see DOJ monitors, joining recent confirmed locations such as Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, Iowa, and Kansas.
While states and localities cannot bar federal election monitors from observing proceedings, they can deny them entry into polling places. As reported by Newsweek this morning that federal monitors will be welcome in counties across Indiana, Kentucky, and Arkansas but not be allowed inside polling places.
USA Today reports that the DOJ will release a full list of all counties it is stationing election observers “early next week.”
— Lewis Thune is a College Fix writing fellow with The Plains Sentinel.