NAACP Sues Justice Department Again, Seeking to Block Plan for Some 1,000 Federal Poll Monitors Nationwide
WASHINGTON — The NAACP filed a new lawsuit on October 16 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking to block the Justice Department's plan to deploy some 1,000 federal election monitors to polling places nationwide during the November 3 midterm elections. Three voters from Arizona, Texas and Florida joined as co-plaintiffs.
According to Bloomberg Law and Democracy Docket, which reviewed the complaint, the NAACP invokes Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act, which bars voter intimidation, arguing that the plan stands in stark contrast to the department's past monitoring efforts, which were limited in scale and carefully circumscribed to assessing compliance with federal civil rights laws. 'There is no federal statute that gives Defendants the authority to turn polling places into interrogation rooms,' the complaint says. The NAACP asks the court to prohibit the plan and to require the department to disclose a complete list of the jurisdictions targeted for monitoring; the complaint also seeks to bar criminal prosecutors and law-enforcement agents from serving as monitors.
'The Voting Rights Act exists to protect voters from exactly this kind of intimidation, including by the DOJ,' said Carmen Daugherty, executive director of the Advancement Project, whose lawyers are involved in the case. The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division has described the monitoring mission as rooting out election fraud. Reports on the filing carried no immediate response from the department.
It is the NAACP's second lawsuit over the same plan in recent weeks: on October 2 the organization sued under the Freedom of Information Act for records on the deployment, a case GSM reported at the time. The new suit asks the court to halt the deployment plan itself. (GSM, based on reporting by Bloomberg Law, Democracy Docket and The Guardian)
Related: America's Electoral System (4): The Midterms: What Is on the Ballot on November 3, 2026
Related: New Hampshire Asks U.S. Supreme Court to Ban All Consideration of Student IDs for Voting
Related: DOJ Asks Court to Stay Voter-Roll Ruling Pending Appeal, Saying the Vacated "Policy" Does Not Exist
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
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