After Trying To Block Election Monitors, Texas Will Now Allow Them Outside Polling Places

An agreement has been struck between Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the Justice Department to allow the presence of federal election monitors outside of polling places in the Lone Star State on Election Day.
According to an agreement filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on Tuesday, election monitors from the Justice Department cannot go inside polling places or central count locations but are permitted to be outside to determine whether federal voting rights are being observed.
The Justice Department announced on Nov. 1 that it would send compliance officials to 27 states and 86 jurisdictions across the U.S. as concerns about voter intimidation and threats to polling places have circulated. The monitors are there to ensure that federal laws like the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and others are being properly enforced.
Those laws bar threatening or obstructing voters trying to cast their ballots. Monitors are not police or federal agents, but lawyers. Federal law permits monitors to observe both inside and outside polling locations — but to go inside, they must receive state permission.
In his response to the notice, Paxton sued and argued that the DOJ’s plan to dispatch monitors infringed on the “states’ constitutional authority to run free and fair elections.”
The agreement reached on Tuesday states that monitors can be within 100 feet of Texas polling locations but are “subject to Texas law regarding electioneering and other conduct within 100 feet of polling and central count locations.”
In Texas, electioneering is defined as posting, using or distributing political signage or literature, and this applies to everyone at the polling place, including voters and poll workers or observers.
According to the agreement, voters are allowed to talk to DOJ personnel at polling sites.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk had ordered the Justice Department to declare that no “observers” from the agency would be present in Texas polling places, but the Trump-appointed judge stopped short of issuing a restraining order, as Paxton had requested.
The agreement on Tuesday heads off what may have been a protracted battle, since Kacsmaryk had asked the parties to explain the distinction and definitions of “monitoring” or “observing” before he decided whether to issue the restraining order.
“The Court cannot issue a temporary restraining order without further clarification on the distinction between ‘monitoring’ and ‘observing’ on the eve of a consequential election,” the judge wrote.
Texas wasn’t the only state that tried to bar compliance officials from inside state polling centers.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft also sued ahead of Election Day, saying monitors were not among the approved categories of individuals allowed at state polling places. Ashcroft accused the feds of trying to “displace” state election officials and cause irreparable harm. U.S. District Judge Sarah Pitlyk, another Trump appointee, was not persuaded.
In her order, Pitlyk noted that in 2021, a settlement agreement had been reached between the City of St. Louis and the DOJ over compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act at voting centers. As a part of that deal, the St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners had agreed to let monitors observe conduct at polling places on Election Day.
“The settlement agreement had a term of three years, and would have terminated in January 2024, but on October 3, 2023, the parties extended the term of the agreement, including the provision allowing monitoring of polling places, through July 11, 2025,” the judge wrote.
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In Missouri, there have been compliance officers in place without incident, she noted.
“The harms to persons with disabilities that led to the Settlement Agreement and the presence of federal observers are documented and uncontested, whereas the harms that the State of Missouri anticipates are speculative—a defect underscored by the fact that similar observers have been present at least twice and their presence apparently went unnoticed,” Pitlyk wrote.
In Florida, Secretary of State Cord Byrd issued a letter to the DOJ saying Florida would send its own monitors to jurisdictions where DOJ monitors are expected to send staff.
Byrd did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday.