Trump administration sued over plans to send election monitors to voting sites

The NAACP has taken the Trump administration to court over a plan to station Justice Department observers at polling places during the November midterms. The group says the effort threatens to jeopardize the vote and could leave voters feeling intimidated. The suit names Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the department's civil rights division and has said she wants 1,000 observers in the field. Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed monitors will go to all 50 states but, on Fox News, said every administration for decades has done the same, according to The Guardian.

The NAACP wants a judge to compel release of records about the deployment, saying the department ignored a Freedom of Information Act request filed on 1 September. Kristen Clarke, the group's general counsel and a former holder of Dhillon's post under Joe Biden, contends no federal statute authorizes such monitoring, and says primary-season observers appeared without notice.

Wyoming's Republican governor, Mark Gordon, told the New York Times that two monitors showed up unannounced at a primary polling site and tried to inspect voting machines. The department rejects that characterization and says it plans a Wyoming presence in November.

Summarized by PolitiKool from The Guardian’s reporting. Read the full story at The Guardian →