Justice Department to Deploy 1,000 Election Monitors as Mail Ballot Rules Face Challenges
Updated
Updated · The Washington Post · Sep 3
Justice Department to Deploy 1,000 Election Monitors as Mail Ballot Rules Face Challenges
3 articles · Updated · The Washington Post · Sep 3
Summary
1,000 Justice Department officials will monitor voting and ballot counting nationwide in the November midterms, an unusually large federal presence as ballots begin going out.
The deployment comes amid broad voter confusion over election rules, with the administration pushing mail-voting limits and seeking voter data while courts have blocked parts of those efforts.
10,000 ballots could be discarded from a single Postal Service batch over one list mismatch, a whistleblower told Congress, adding to warnings that voting by mail may be riskier this year.
92 polling locations were cut this week in one Texas battleground county, and other communities are also shifting sites, raising the chance voters will find their usual polling place has changed.
Federal election monitoring is routine, but this cycle's scale and parallel concerns about intimidation, postal delays and litigation have prompted civil-rights groups to train local greeters near polls.