Texas election officials ask DOJ for federal monitors to protect the election from state monitors

essentialsaltes

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Three top officials in Texas’ most populous county have asked the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to send federal monitors to Harris County for the midterm elections to oversee what they view as an effort by Republican state officials to “chill voters’ trust in the election process” and “intimidate” election workers.

Earlier this week, the director of the Forensic Audit Division of the Texas secretary of state’s office sent a letter to Harris County election officials informing them that it would be sending “a contingent of inspectors” to observe the “central count” next week, when early voting in Texas is slated to begin. The letter said the inspectors would “perform randomized checks on election records” and that the state attorney general’s office will also “dispatch a task force … to immediately respond to any legal issues identified by secretary of state, inspectors, poll watchers, or voters.”
 

Fantine

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People in big cities should have voting as accessible and intimidation free as those in small towns, and if it takes the federal government to go after knaves and scoundrels in Texas, bring them on.
 
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essentialsaltes

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GOP push to monitor voting in Texas’s Harris County spurs outcry
The conflict is centered on Houston, where Republicans say more scrutiny of the process is needed. Democrats say GOP efforts could scare off voters.

Last week, Paxton announced the formation of a statewide “2022 General Election Integrity Team.” The announcement encouraged Texans to submit “information about alleged violations of the Texas Election Code.” It wasn’t clear where else [other than Houston] the team would deploy, and Paxton’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee said in an interview that he, along with the county’s chief executive, Lina Hidalgo, and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner — all Democrats — sent a request to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division for federal election monitors to be deployed at polling and counting locations in Harris. [i.e. OP story]

“Our biggest concern is we’re going to get to the counting process and there’s going to be folks from the attorney general’s office disrupting stuff in a bad-faith way,” Menefee said of Paxton’s office.

Menefee noted that both Scott and Paxton participated in Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and backed the state audit of Harris, which Trump had requested. He called the state’s letter “vague and ominous,” intended as “a political tool to undermine our elections.”

[Texas is in the middle of its 2 week early voting period. In addition to the aforementioned monitors, there are also the usual crews of partisan poll watchers, who don't have much authority to do anything other than watch.]

One Black voter complained to the hotline that when he showed up to vote at a polling location at a southwest Dallas community college, a White man outside told him he had to first surrender his cellphone and smartwatch, Gutierrez said. He said the voter complied, cast his ballot and recovered his items, only to discover the man who seized them “was not a worker at that poll site. They were just trying to be intimidating.”

A spokesman for the Dallas elections office confirmed multiple reports of poll observers trying inappropriately to confiscate phones and smartwatches from voters. Under state law, voters must put away their phones but can carry them into the polls. There is no requirement to remove smartwatches, he said.
 
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SimplyMe

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Personally, I want to see Paxton finally go to trial on his 5-year-old indictments for fraud. Pretty sad when your state's top lawyer, and the person tasked with ensuring the elections are fair, is awaiting trial on fraud charges.
 
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