Department of Justice to send election monitors to Minnesota

The Department of Justice plans to send out 1,000 election monitors to states around the country tomorrow. That includes Minnesota. While having monitors at polling places is not new, the scale of the oversight might be. Fox 9's Emily Pofall is live at the state Capitol for us this evening as well. And Emily, the Trump administration's push for poll monitors has brought up concerns about voter intimidation. Yeah, so much so that the ACLU is suing the feds to try and stop it. The Secretary of State told the press here today that he's not anticipating any issues, but his office is taking precautions anyways. The lines, the stickers, the ballots, all common for voters to find at their polling place on election day. Perhaps more common now, federal election monitors. They don't have badges, they don't have guns. We're just here to observe, wearing plain clothes. Secretary of State Steve Simon says he expects lawyers from the Department of Justice to watch Minnesota polling places November 3rd, not law enforcement or immigration officers. The Trump administration plans to send 1,000 monitors out around the country, a larger number than ever before. But Simon says election monitors aren't new under Trump. Other administrations have used them too, mostly to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act. Our aim all along has just been- To make sure that the stated reason is the actual reason. DOJ monitors were in Minnesota for the August primary, and Simon says didn't cause any issues. We anticipate that this will be very much like what we experienced in the primary. Thank you, Murray. And again, I want to give credit where it's due. We had a good dialogue and relationship with them. They let us know where we're going to be. They made every effort to follow all the rules and laws. There will be five to six teams of two in Hennepin County and four to five teams of two in Ramsey County. They can't come within 100 feet of a polling place. They aren't allowed to talk to voters on their way in, but can speak with voters on their way out. No voter has to talk to a monitor even if approached. Simon and the Attorney General's office will deploy local monitors to make sure federal monitors follow the law. We have no reason to doubt it will be any different But we just want to make sure that we're in contact with them and we are. Interesting to note, Simon says that his team got a routine election security briefing from federal authorities two weeks ago. But he also says the federal government has stopped performing certain cybersecurity tests on local voting systems, which has left his. Office, the state's office to perform those necessary penetration and stress tests on their systems at their own expense, Simon says, to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars reporting from the Capitol. Emily Pofall, Fox 9. All right. Thanks, Emily. Republican Senate.