Texas County Asks for U.S. Election Monitors as State Plans to Send Inspectors in to Conduct Election Inspections
Texas County Asks for U.S. Election Monitors as State Plans to Send Inspectors in to Conduct Election Inspections
In a letter to the Secretary of State, US Representative Dana Rohrabacher, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, asks the State Department to approve monitors to supervise and audit the federal elections in Texas’s 77 counties.
(AP Photo/Seth Perlman)U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican from California, told the Secretary of State’s office that his office would ask the State Department for the approval of the monitors as soon as possible, according to a letter obtained by The Hill. The letter, signed by Rohrabacher, was forwarded to two other members of Congress, both Democrats, who have requested the monitors be sent to their states.
Texas is the latest state in which the secretary of state has requested monitors to conduct an election that critics contend is tainted. In North Carolina, a judge ruled in January that a group of monitors could monitor the state’s election but must be supervised by state election officials as well. In Texas, the monitors, who would be paid by the state, would be asked by the secretary of state to observe voting there and certify the results of the election if the secretary’s office concludes there is any problem with the vote integrity.
The Election Assistance Commission, which is set to oversee Texas’s elections on Sunday, is currently responsible for overseeing the state’s election, but observers have criticized the commission for being a rubber stamp for the election administration.
At the same time, the Secretary of State’s office has also been criticized by some for not allowing them to do their job properly and has been unable to certify the election results. Many critics feel that the Secretary of State is unable to enforce their own law, which is supposed to ensure the accurate vote tabulation in the state. They claim that the Secretary of State has violated the law and has made erroneous rulings more than once in the past. In March, the Election Assistance Commission denied requests from members of Congress and the press to send observers
