Summit and Wasatch counties were not included in the U.S. Department of Justice's election-monitoring deployment Tuesday, Nov. 3, while federal monitors visited voting centers in neighboring Salt Lake County.
The DOJ named only Salt Lake County on its published Utah monitoring list.
Salt Lake County initially expected 12 monitors. But County Clerk Lannie Chapman said Tuesday morning that only 11 were eligible to serve as poll watchers after one person failed to meet Utah's voter-eligibility requirement, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.
Chapman said the monitors planned to visit all 40 voting centers in the county, spending approximately 30 minutes at each. As of 10 a.m., teams had visited several locations without interfering with voting or interacting with voters, she said.
The DOJ announced approximately 1,000 monitors and observers nationwide, marking the first time its election-monitoring effort covered all 50 states. The deployment was coordinated by the department's Civil Rights Division.
What the monitors will do
The monitors were expected to examine compliance with federal voting rights protections, including requirements for Spanish-language election materials and accessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to KUER.
Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, Utah's chief election officer, said federal monitors must follow state rules governing poll watchers.
Those rules generally require observers to remain at least 6 feet from voting booths and ballot boxes. Monitors cannot interfere with voting, examine ballots or attempt to influence voters.
According to a DOJ letter provided to Henderson, monitors were instructed to observe and take notes without interfering in election operations. They were also told to identify themselves to election officials, wear business casual clothing and refrain from carrying firearms.
Salt Lake County Clerk Chapman previously said she had "no concerns" about the monitors' presence, according to the Utah News Dispatch.
Concerns from voting rights groups
Some voting rights advocates questioned the expanded federal monitoring effort.
The League of Women Voters of Utah and the ACLU of Utah expressed concern that uncertainty surrounding the monitors' assignments could make voters uneasy.
The organizations had helped organize volunteer poll watchers before the federal deployment was announced. Utah News Dispatch reported that coalition organizers had trained roughly 150 observers, some of whom also planned to watch the federal monitoring teams.
Henderson said Utah would not assign separate state observers in response, unlike California and Minnesota. Her office had been working with election officials across Utah's 29 counties on contingency plans.
What it means for Summit County
Neither Summit County nor neighboring Wasatch County appears on the DOJ's list of Utah jurisdictions selected for federal monitoring.
That means the department did not publicly identify any monitoring assignments in those counties for the Nov. 3 election. The absence of an assignment does not change the federal voting rights protections that apply to local voters.
Residents with questions or complaints about potential federal voting rights violations can contact the DOJ's election hotline at 1-800-253-3931 or email [email protected].
