Republican Caroleene Dobson’s campaign in Alabama’s Second Congressional District is objecting to deployment of federal election monitors in Alabama recently announced by the U.S. Department of Justice.
In a written statement, Dobson’s campaign said the move “reeks of fraud and intimidation” and is “like the referees wearing the other team’s jersey.”
In a statement to Alabama Daily News, Democrat Shomari Figures said the DOJ has monitored elections in Alabama for nearly 60 years. Figures formerly worked for the department.
He said Dobson is preparing for defeat Tuesday and “she wants to lay the groundwork for casting doubt on the outcome.”
Earlier this month, U.S. Attorney Sean Costello said U.S. Assistant Attorney John P. Hutchins III would serve as the District Election Officer for the Southern District of Alabama as part of the Justice Department’s nationwide Election Day Program.
According to the DOJ, Hutchins is responsible for overseeing the complaints of voting rights concerns, threats of violence to election officials or staff, and election fraud.
“Every citizen must be able to vote without interference or discrimination and to have that vote counted in a fair and free election,” Costello said in a written statement. “Similarly, election officials and staff must be able to serve without being subject to unlawful threats of violence.”
The U.S. Supreme Court last year backed a lower court’s decision to impose a new congressional map on the state after they ruled that the state’s existing map likely violated the Voting Rights Act by packing a disproportionate number of Black voters into a single district, District 7, and thereby diluted their voting power and congressional representation.
“We are already playing on a field that federal judges drew to favor the other team, and now Biden is assigning attorneys from his Department of Justice to oversee the balloting, which is like the referees wearing the other team’s jersey,” Dobson campaign spokesman Drew Dickson said. “For all we know, these so-called monitors were hand-picked by Shomari Figures, who worked directly alongside Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland in the Justice Department.”
The contest between Dobson, a real estate attorney, and Figures, whose career in Washington included working for the DOJ and Obama administration, has gained national attention as Republicans try to hold onto their slim majority in the U.S. House.
“If a Republican voter, candidate, or campaign complains about intimidation or fraud at the polls, do we seriously think that the Biden Justice Department which, until recently, employed Shomari Figures is going to lift the first finger to investigate?” Dickson said. “Maybe they’ll let Shomari Figures investigate the complaints himself.”
The DOJ has monitored elections in Alabama since 1965, Figures said.
“Why? Because of this state’s well-documented history of voter suppression. And the state is up to its old tricks again. Not just with the recent efforts to remove voters from the rolls just before an election, but Mrs. Dobson knows that she is running in a District that was literally created because of Alabama’s attempts to suppress the voting power of Black people. And judges appointed by Donald Trump made this determination.
“What Mrs. Dobson failed to point out was that even Donald Trump’s administration used DOJ monitors.”