Missouri sues to block Justice Department from sending poll monitors

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican-led state of Missouri asked a judge on Monday to block the U.S. Justice Department from sending lawyers to St. Louis on Election Day to monitor for compliance with federal voting rights laws, even after the city's election board agreed to permit it.

The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri by the state's attorney general and secretary of state, accuses the Justice Department of making an 11th hour plan that intends to "displace state election authorities" by sending poll monitors on Tuesday to locations throughout St. Louis.

Republican former President Donald Trump, who faces Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in Tuesday's U.S. presidential election, continues to falsely claim that his 2020 defeat was the result of widespread fraud. He has urged his supporters to turn out at polling places to watch for suspected fraud.

Missouri is one of 27 states the Justice Department said on Friday it would send staff out to monitor voting locations, as it has done regularly during national elections.

The only location in Missouri it is sending poll monitors to is St. Louis, which in January 2021 reached a settlement with the Justice Department over concerns about architectural barriers and other problems that could have hindered voting by people with disabilities.

As part of that settlement, the city's Board of Election Commissioners agreed to allow the Justice Department to monitor for compliance. This included the monitoring of polling places on Election Day.

The settlement was completed at the very end of the Trump administration, when Eric Dreiband previously served as the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the lawsuit.

While some of the locations the Justice Department will monitor on Election Day include key counties in the seven battleground states expected to help decide the election, the Justice Department is also sending personnel to a variety of other locations such as counties in Texas, Massachusetts, Alaska, South Dakota and New Jersey.

Missouri is not one of the seven battleground states.

The Justice Department is responsible for enforcing a variety of federal voting rights laws, such as one that requires states to accommodate voters with disabilities and another that requires states to allow U.S. citizens and military members who reside overseas to vote by absentee ballot in federal elections.

In 2022, both Florida and Missouri resisted efforts by the Justice Department to send poll monitors to locations including Miami-Dade and Broward County, Florida.

Florida, in a letter to the Justice Department that year, said state law prohibited department employees from being inside polling places unless they were on a list of permitted personnel.

In response to the concerns, the Justice Department had its staff stationed outside polling locations in Florida and Missouri for the 2022 election.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Scott Malone and Bill Berkrot)