Justice Department dispatches election monitors to Florida, but state leaders say they can't enter polling sites

Skyler Swisher, Orlando Sentinel on Nov 1, 2024

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The U.S. Department of Justice will watch for voting rights violations in four Florida counties on Election Day — but their observers won’t be inside polling locations, election officials said Friday.

The DOJ is sending personnel to 86 areas in 27 states, including Broward, Miami-Dade, Orange and Osceola counties in Florida, to ensure compliance with civil rights laws.

Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd, a Gov. Ron DeSantis appointee, advised the DOJ on Friday that state law doesn’t explicitly permit federal election monitors to be inside polling locations.

Elections officials in Orange and Osceola counties said the DOJ told them that their observers would remain outside.

The DOJ declined the Orlando Sentinel’s request for comment. It announced its Election Day plans Friday but did not explain how it selected the states, which stretch from Alaska to Mississippi, Texas to New Jersey, nor the cities and counties slated to get federal observers.

For decades, federal monitors have visited polling locations across the country to check for compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting.

But recently, GOP leaders in Florida and other states have moved to deny them entry to polling sites. DeSantis’ administration issued a memo saying that ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

“We told them that under state law that is not permitted, and we asked them to respect state law,” Byrd said at the time. “They can go there and do their job, but they have to do that job outside of the polling place.”

On Friday, Byrd wrote in a memo to DOJ officials that even if authorized, the presence of federal election monitors “would be counterproductive and could potentially undermine confidence in the election.”

The state will send its own monitors to the four counties on the DOJ’s list to “ensure that there is no interference with the voting process,” he wrote.

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