The U.S. Department of Justice will deploy 12 federal election monitors to Marion County on Election Day, according to the Marion County Election Board.
Board staff and attorneys met Wednesday morning with officials from the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. The meeting followed an email the board received last week saying federal monitors would be sent to Marion and Lake counties on Election Day.
“We learned that 12 monitors who are not law enforcement officers will be in Marion County on Election Day,” Marion County Clerk Kate Sweeney Bell said in a statement. “Those monitors will not be allowed in the vote centers but may be outside of the polling locations like any other public citizen.”
According to the DOJ, the monitors will look at compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and language-assistance laws, as well as the use of provisional ballots.
The Election Board said it is passing the information along to poll workers as part of their ongoing training. That training includes a written protocol for responding to federal officials at vote centers, which the board drafted and adopted earlier this month.
“Voters have a right to free and fair elections absent of any interference or intimidation,” Sweeney Bell said. “No voter will be hassled by monitors when entering the polls, nor do they have any responsibility to talk to them after they’ve cast their ballot.”
A list of Marion County vote centers is available at Vote.indy.gov.
