[EL] how does election observing work at polling places?

[Brian Landsberg]

Thanks, John.  Very informative.
I think my inquiry failed to explain the context.  John knows the context but others may not.  DOJ has issued a press release that begins: "The Justice Department announced today that its Civil Rights Division plans to deploy more than 780 federal observers and department personnel to 51 jurisdictions in 23 states for the Nov. 6, 2012, general election."
See http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/November/12-crt-1312.html .

Brian K. Landsberg
Distinguished Professor and Scholar
Pacific McGeorge School of Law
3200 Fifth Avenue, Sacramento CA 95817
916 739-7103

From: John Tanner [mailto:john.k.tanner at gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, November 03, 2012 8:23 PM
To: Brian Landsberg
Cc: Doug Hess; law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu; Election Law
Subject: Re: [EL] how does election observing work at polling places?

Brian,

The shift to minority language enforcement has been going on for some time.  I know that I ran out of potential Section 2 cases in AL and MS in 1993, as I recall -- everyone else had already been sued.  There was a shift from section 2 suits in the South to suits in Latino and Native American areas.  As those thinned out, there was a shift to section 203/4e enforcement -- essentially blocking what are in effect literacy tests for non-English speaking citizens (whose numbers are legion).  These now dominate DOJ's VRA enforcement.  By my count, 28 of the 44 VRA cases 2001-2008 were language cases, as have been 7 of the 8 VRA cases DOJ has filed in the Obama administration. (the cases are listed on the Voting Section web site)  The language cases have also addresses outrageous abuse of Latino and Asian voters at the polls and include appropriate relief (minority poll officials, etc.  The consent decrees and other orders also are on the Voting Section web site)

This is a long introduction to your question about observers who can enter the polls and serve as witnesses to whatever occurs.  DOJ can designate section 5 counties and send observers there.  In other areas, they send monitors (who may or may not be able to enter the polling places).  Basically, DOJ monitors gather information to support section 203 (or 4e or 4f4 or 208 or 2 cases).  After lawsuits and successful judgments include section 3 relief, the observers monitor compliance.  A good bit of the Southern coverage now is directed to protecting language minorities rather than black citizens.  Actually, a good bit of the drop in coverage numbers (approx 1090 personnel in 2004, c. 780 in 2012) has reflected the expiration of section 3 relief in language cases.

The key to determining where DOJ assigns people in election day is (or should be) the tricky business of identifying specific polling places in which someone is likely to see and document abuse of a minority voter: election coverage costs a good bit of money and, as you can imagine, takes up a lot of the section's energy.  But if done well, it also generates lawsuits and remarkable increases in bilingual poll workers and large minority voter registration  There also is an element of deterrence, but I'm not entirely sold on that.

The limitation on DOJ to send observrs only to Section 5 jurisdictions handicaps enforcement a good bit.
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