DOJ sued over plans to monitor Missouri polls

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft filed a lawsuit against him on Monday Department of Justiceclaiming he overstepped his authority by arranging for federal officials to monitor the polls in St. Louis on Election Day.

Missouri lawyers wrote in a complaint According to Ashcroft, a Republican, that state law “strictly limits” who is authorized to be present to observe activity at the polls.

“Poll monitors employed by the DOJ are not on this list,” the attorneys wrote.

The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, led by longtime attorney Kristen Clarke, announced Friday that it plans to monitor polls in 87 jurisdictions in more than two dozen states on Election Day. Monitoring will involve deploying staff to those locations and liaising with local officials to track potential violations of federal election laws, the DOJ said.

DOJ sued over plans to monitor Missouri polls — Vanessa Starke, of Lee’s Summit, Montana, reads a book halfway through her 90-minute wait in line to cast her ballot at an early voting location, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024, in Blue Springs, Montana. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Poll tracking in most states, including Missouri, is usually governed by state law and involves the state granting access to a certain number of designated Republican and Democratic observers to observe voters at the polls on Election Day and oversees the vote counting process.

Ashcroft accused the DOJ of trying to interfere with Missouri’s election process by sending the department’s own deputies to monitor polls without its authorization. He said the department did not have a specific explanation for choosing St. Louis and that the decision was “arbitrary and capricious” and amounted to “harassment.”

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“The DoJ just doesn’t seem to get it – we don’t need them here; we don’t want them here,” Ashcroft said in a statement. “This time we are taking it a step further and filing a lawsuit against the DOJ to get them to stop the ongoing harassment.”

The DOJ has shown interest in the St. Louis election process since 2019, when it accused the city’s Board of Election Commissioners of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act during that year’s elections.

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The DOJ issued dozens of allegations of violations, such as sloped entrances to polling places or missing signage, that it said St. Louis must address them to comply with federal disability law. The department reached a regulatory agreement with the board on the matter in 2021, which expired this year.

A DOJ spokeswoman declined to comment on the lawsuit.