NEW HAVEN, CT — The U.S. Department of Justice plans to send election monitors to New Haven polling places on Tuesday, Nov. 3, and state and city officials say Connecticut law keeps them outside, beyond the 75-foot zone around each polling place.
As far as the Secretary of the State's office knows, New Haven is the only Connecticut municipality where the department plans to send monitors, office spokesperson Matthew Clyburn told the New Haven Independent.
Two Teams, Focused on Language Help and Access
The department plans to send two teams of two people, according to the Secretary of the State's office. Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas said the department told state and city officials the teams would check whether voters get proper language assistance and whether the outside of polling places is accessible to voters with disabilities, the Independent reported. The Voting Rights Act's language-assistance requirement covers all of New Haven under federal law, according to the mayor's press release.
The department told the city in an Oct. 21 letter and email to City Clerk Michael Smart from James Thomas Tucker, a senior trial attorney in its Civil Rights Division, the Independent reported. "As the Civil Rights Division has done in the past, our monitors only observe," Tucker wrote. "They do not intrude or interfere in any way in the voting process." City spokesperson Lenny Speiller said the city has not been told which polling places the monitors will visit.
In a statement to NBC Connecticut, the department said it will have about 1,000 monitors in counties across the country, who will observe and report potential violations of federal law for review after Election Day.
What State Law Allows
Thomas said the department assured state and local officials that its monitors will stay outside the 75-foot restricted area around polling places, observe without interfering with voting or election workers, and speak with voters only with their consent and only outside that boundary. "Barring federal monitors from inside polling locations is not a partisan issue, but an issue of state law," Thomas said.
The monitors will have no power to arrest, detain, search or seize anyone, Mayor Justin Elicker said the department indicated, NBC Connecticut reported.