On Monday, the US Justice department announced that they will be deploying 500 of their personnel from their civil rights division in 28 states to monitor the elections. These states will be handled by staff who have no statutory authority to access polling sites as a result of a 2013 Supreme Court decision which questioned several parts of the Voting Rights Act as one of them gives the department the chance to send in their personnel to access the polls directly.
The incoming elections on Tuesday will be the first time the Justice Department can only send full-access observers to states where a federal court ruling authorizes their role in the election. The states of Alaska, California, Louisiana, New York and Alabama permitted the department to send full-access observers; but, Alabama's court order only involves the municipal elections and the department will not be sending poll watchers in the state this year.
For the other 24 states, the deployed Justice department staff will only serve as election "monitors", who must rely on local and state authorities to give them access to the polling locations. The head of the department's civil rights division Vanita Gupta said, "In most cases, voters on the ground will see very little practical difference between monitors and observers."
The department did not say how many of these deployed personnel will be acting as full-fledged observers. However, these personnel, according to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, will be impartial and have only one goal in mind: "to see to it that every eligible voter can participate in our elections to the full extent that federal law provides."
