The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday announced it will be sending inspectors from its Civil Rights Division to monitor polling locations in 64 jurisdictions across 24 states on Election Day, including in Harris County, TX where Houston is located.
Leaders in Harris County had requested help after the state government in October said it would send its own election inspectors there during the midterms. The state’s extra layer of scrutiny was related to an examination of vote counts from the 2020 election sought by former President Trump.
No credible evidence has emerged of widespread voter fraud from Texas’ 2020 post-election review, which Gov. Greg Abbott (R) ordered last year, at Trump’s urging, in the state’s four most populous counties. President Biden won Harris County by 13% in 2020 while former President Trump won the overall state of Texas by 52%.
The DOJ has routinely dispatched monitors into election locations since the passage of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.
By Monday nearly 5.5 million Texas voters had already cast their ballots. The Texas Tribune reports there have been “few, if any, reports of major concern” regarding voter intimidation or the like across the state.
