Voters at Maricopa County polling places on Tuesday, Nov. 3, may see U.S. Justice Department staff watching the process, and the county's elections office says they have no authority to stop anyone from voting.
A department spokesperson told KTAR News that about 1,000 monitors will be sent to all 50 states on Election Day for routine election monitoring, according to the department. The spokesperson did not say which counties will get them, and no list naming jurisdictions had been posted by the department as of Friday.
Maricopa County has regularly drawn federal monitors, and in July the department announced it was watching the primary at polling sites in Maricopa, Apache and Pima counties, staffed by its Civil Rights Division and Arizona's U.S. Attorney's Office.
What the county says monitors can do
Jennifer Liewer, deputy director of the Maricopa County Elections Department, told KTAR's morning show on Friday that voters should not be alarmed. She said the county believes the effort is being made in good faith.
Liewer said the monitors may talk with poll workers and voters but have very limited powers inside a polling location and cannot remove anyone from a voting center. She said the county is working with Justice Department officials, that the small number of monitors at the primary caused no problems, and that their work then included checking that Election Day information was offered in Spanish.
She pointed to the Voting Rights Act as their legal basis and to Arizona laws that bar interfering with a person's vote.
The department's spokesperson said each monitor's job is the same: to watch for possible violations of federal law. The department said it will review any concerns after Election Day.
The concerns
Not everyone shares that confidence. The Campaign Legal Center, a voting rights group, said in a factsheet this month that monitors must follow state rules for observers and may not direct poll workers, challenge a voter's eligibility, try to sway votes or intimidate anyone.
