DOJ will monitor Mecklenburg, Wake for voting rights violations on Election Day

The U.S. Department of Justice plans to send staffers to Mecklenburg and Wake counties on Election Day to monitor compliance with federal voting rights laws, including those that prohibit voter intimidation and voter suppression based on race, color, national origin or religion.

The two N.C. counties are among 44 in 18 states that will be monitored Tuesday, the department announced Monday.

Asked why Mecklenburg and Wake — North Carolina’s largest counties and home to its largest cities, Charlotte and Raleigh — were chosen, a DOJ spokesperson said in an email only that “every federal election year, the Department makes a new assessment of where the Department should be, and send out staff based on that assessment for that year.”

N.C. Elections Director Karen Brinson Bell said Monday that “we welcome them to observe and we think they’ll observe good election practices in North Carolina.”

DOJ monitors will also go to Richland County in South Carolina, which includes Columbia. Two Democratic state senators in South Carolina —Dick Harpootlian and Darrell Jackson — condemned the DOJ plan to send personnel to the counties, charging that it was “a blatant and despicable effort by Donald Trump and (Attorney General) Bill Barr to use federal power to intimidate Black and minority voters.”

But the department’s Civil Rights Division has regularly monitored elections around the country since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 to end widespread denial of voting rights of African-Americans in the South.

“Our federal laws protect the right of all American citizens to vote without suffering discrimination, intimidation, and harassment,” said Eric S. Dreiband, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, in a statement Monday. “The work of the Civil Rights Division around each federal general election is a continuation of its historical mission to ensure that all of our citizens can freely exercise this most fundamental American right.”On Election Day 2016, during the Obama administration, DOJ monitors went to five N.C. counties, according to a report by N.C. Policy Watch. The counties then were Mecklenburg, Wake, Forsyth, Cumberland and Robeson.

The department said its personnel will be available on Tuesday to receive any complaints about possible violations of the federal voting rights laws. Persons can call 800-253-3931 or file a complaint form at https://civilrights.justice.gov/

Amid increased worries this year about possible violence or disruptions at polling places, the department said in its announcement that complaints about any such occurrences should first be reported to local election officials and police, then to the DOJ.

Last week, the department’s Criminal Division announced that it would continue to enforce federal laws that prohibit election fraud, including “destruction of ballots, vote-buying, multiple voting, submission of fraudulent ballots or registrations, and alteration of votes, and malfeasance by postal or election officials and employees.”

Ahead of Tuesday’s election, President Donald Trump has made unsubstantiated charges that the great increase in absentee ballots during this COVID-19 pandemic will result in fraud.

This story was originally published November 2, 2020 at 3:16 PM.