Feds deploy election monitors to L.A. after last-minute legal wrangling over ballots

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Set us as preferred The Justice Department sent a last-minute surge of election monitors into Los Angeles Tuesday morning, hours after losing the latest legal tug-of-war over California’s 20,000 contested ballots.In a pair of decisions late Monday night, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals published and then quickly rescinded a decision that would have allowed the Trump administration to prosecute election workers who processed contested ballots, even after their demands to segregate them were struck down by the Supreme Court.

Then, as dawn broke on Election Day, the Justice Department announced it was sending out “1,000 election monitors and observers” across the U.S.in what it called “the largest monitoring effort in DOJ history.”Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Detroit were among the dozens of jurisdictions where monitors were sent under the auspices of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — legislation the President Trump has worked tirelessly to gut across both his administrations.A Justice Department spokesperson said the federal monitors “will be at polling locations,” but that the department is not “giving out precinct details.” Politics Gov.

Gavin Newsom and others have warned of Trump administration interference in the midterm election, including potentially through attempted ballot seizures.The move was widely seen as an intimidation tactic.“They’re not doing this to make sure that there are free and fair elections,” said Eric J.Segall, a law professor at Georgia State University and an expert on the Supreme Court.

“They’re doing this for nakedly partisan reasons, and the federal government shouldn’t be allowed do that.”California officials were quick to hit back.“We’ll have our observers on site keeping an eye on your monitors to ensure the integrity of California’s free, fair, saf...