Change to Voting Rights Act makes it harder to monitor U.S. elections | The Telegraph

November’s presidential election will be the first in more than 50 years that the federal government won’t send a full complement of specially trained observers to monitor elections in states, like Georgia, with histories of discriminatory voting practices.

After the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder weakened a core provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the U.S. Department of Justice could deploy special election observers from the Office of Personnel Management only where authorized by a court order.

Because of that requirement, the department will send a smaller number of its own staff attorneys and other personnel to monitor elections next month in roughly half the states. Unlike the special observers, the department staffers won’t have the authority to view activity inside polling places and locations where votes are tallied unless they get approval from local officials.

That potential loss of access to real-time voting operations is causing concern among civil- and voting-rights activists about the integrity of Georgia's vote process.

“Not having that seat on the front lines creates a disadvantage,” said Kristen Clarke, the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, one of the nation’s leading civil rights organizations. “I think you need to be inside the polling sites shoulder to shoulder with poll workers and observing carefully every aspect of the process to ensure all voters are treated fairly.”

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is asking supporters to monitor polling places as “Trump election observers” in order to “stop crooked Hillary from rigging this election,” according to his website.

Based on Trump’s rhetoric about voter fraud, some fear the presence of untrained, partisan Trump observers could lead to increased episodes of voter intimidation.

Federal observers “watch the election process, to collect evidence, to deter wrongdoing, to defuse tension and to promote compliance” with federal law, according to a recent speech by Vanita Gupta, head of the civil rights division at the Justice Department. They also look for different treatment of voters based on race and whether materials and assistance are provided for non-English speakers and voters with disabilities.

The Voting Rights Act allowed the attorney general to send observers to Georgia and eight other states with persistent histories of widespread voting discrimination if there were “meritorious complaints from residents, elected officials or civic participation organizations” that efforts to deny or hinder the right to vote “on account of race or color or (membership in a minority language group) are likely to occur.”

A total of 153 counties in 11 states have been certified for federal observers since 1965. Mississippi’s 51 certified counties lead all states. Georgia is next, with 29 of its 159 counties – about 18 percent – authorized for federal monitors at least once since 1965.

In July 2012, observers were sent to monitor elections in Randolph and Washington counties. They also monitored the 2012 general election in Randolph County.

In December 2009 federal observers monitored the runoff election in Union Point, Georgia.

And a government brief in the Shelby case revealed that in 1990, observers monitored a special election in Pike County, Georgia, after the original election was blocked because the city had conducted an illegal after-hours voter registration session for whites only.

“It’s rational to think that the places that have had the worst histories of discrimination – and I don’t mean ancient history, I mean recent histories of discrimination – are going to continue to be the hot spots. We know about Mississippi. We know about Georgia,” said Dale Ho, who heads the Voting Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Federal observers watch and record polling-place activity in coordination with federal civil rights attorneys and local election officials. Because bureaucratic errors rather than malfeasance are at the root of most polling place problems and irregularities, election officials across the partisan spectrum want to minimize those errors and may appreciate the assistance of federal monitors, Ho said.

“But the places where we’ve seen voter intimidation with the cooperation of people working around a party or with local officials, I would guess in those circumstances the prospect of cooperation is low,” Ho added.

The office of Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp did not respond to repeated interview requests for this story.

In a statement, Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said that despite federal monitors’ inability to observe activity inside polling places without permission, they had continued to be “granted the same access to observe within a polling place as state observers” from his own office and from the state attorney general’s office.

“We have always and will continue to accommodate any federal observer sent to the state to observe our elections,” wrote Hosemann, a Republican.

Whether local elections officials in Georgia extend the same courtesy is anybody’s guess. The Justice Department has not yet disclosed what states and counties its attorneys and staffers will be sent to.

On Election Day in 2012, the Justice Department sent 780 trained observers and department personnel to 51 locations in 23 states. In next month’s election, the Justice Department can send the special observers from the Office of Personnel Management only to a handful of jurisdictions in Alaska, California, Louisiana and New York where they have been authorized by court order.

The downsizing was required after the Shelby decision struck down a requirement that the Justice Department or a federal court preapprove voting-rule changes in Mississippi and eight other states with a history of disenfranchising minority voters.

The decision invalidated the formula for determining which jurisdictions were subject to the so-called “pre-clearance” provision. And because the same problematic formula helped determine where observers could be sent without a court order, the department is no longer able to dispatch federal observers at the attorney general’s discretion.

The decision “severely curtailed” the department’s ability to ensure voting rights for all, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said during a speech earlier this month in Newark, New Jersey.

“Indeed, this fall will be our nation’s first presidential election in almost 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act,” Lynch told the audience.

The Justice Department will deploy “a robust number of trained department personnel into roughly half of the nation’s states this fall – at least as many states as in 2012, despite the setback of Shelby County,” Lynch continued. “This expert team will watch the proceedings carefully to make sure that the elections are conducted fairly and in accordance with federal voting rights laws.”

The nonpartisan Election Protection coalition provides a national hotline (866-OUR-VOTE) to assist voters in every state with questions or concerns about their rights and the upcoming election.