NEW YORK (AP) – The US Department of Justice Requests Access to Voting Equipment Used in 2020 election Two Missouri counties appear to be a broader effort to more closely monitor the national election process.
In August, DOJ officials contacted county clerks and sought access to their Dominion voting system equipment, according to a memo from the Missouri County Store Staff Association and election officials shared with the Associated Press on Wednesday.
Jasper County Clerk Charlie Davis declined, saying he no longer had any equipment. The memo said McDonald County Clerk Jessica Cole not only had the equipment, but she declined. In a statement cited in the memo, Cole said state and federal laws prohibit election officials from giving unauthorized access to election equipment.
Unconventional demands for U.S. President Donald Trump won three times, first reported Missouri Independence, It signals how the DOJ during Trump’s second period has monitored more in depth how the state is conducting elections. The President himself I want a wide range of authority With a gradual election into the mid-2026 period that the Constitution has not given him.
Election experts say the Department of Justice has grown beyond legal authority due to its outreach in Missouri and separate requests for state voter registration lists in almost 20 states.
That’s what Colorado-based Dominion is like Frequent targets of conspiracy theorists The one who defended Trump’s false claims He claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that the device operated the votes without evidence. Fighted those claims by filing a honour-loss lawsuit that led to a large settlement: a conservative outlet Newsmax Recently I agreed to pay $67 million in 2023 Fox News After the judge oversees the case, he agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million. “Crystal Clear” None of the allegations against the company were true.
DOJ has no authority over voting machines, and lacks expertise or ability to review equipment, David Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer who runs the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said in a media briefing Wednesday.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and it was not clear whether Missouri outreach had anything to do with it. Trump’s call in June To appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the 2020 elections. He refused to accept His loss That year, that year, Democrat Joe Biden Lose dozens of court challenges, audit, Recount and review It confirmed the results of the battlefield states His own attorney general They say there is no evidence of widespread fraud.
In Missouri, voting equipment is approved by the Secretary of State and meets strict state and federal standards, said Shelley Parks, president of the Missouri County Clerks and election officials. Parks said local election officials are responsible for custody, maintenance, preparation, testing and storage of equipment. Unauthorized parties are not permitted to access or tamper with the machine.
According to the memo, former Missouri Secretary of State Republican Jay Ashcroftcontacted Jasper County Clerk last week and asked him to follow the DOJ’s request. Ashcroft suggested that store clerks should give the DOJ the equipment and that Ashcroft would replace the equipment with new items, the memo said. The clerk told Ashcroft that he could not comply because he no longer had voting equipment.
Ashcroft could not be immediately contacted for comment. The memo said Ashcroft’s request followed the initial outreach to the two clerks by Mac Warner, a former Republican secretary of West Virginia who currently works for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.
Requests to access Dominion voting equipment follow a DOJ’s efforts to obtain a copy of the voter registration list The AP has found it from at least 23 state election managers.
In some states that rejected or denied these requests, if they cited their own state law or DOJ not fulfilling their privacy law obligations, the agency sent additional letters requesting voter data on short deadlines.
In Minnesota and California, DOJ officials threatened to sue voter lists.
As states have constitutional authority to hold elections, and as federal law protects individual data sharing with the government, the extraordinarily vast outreach has sparked vigilance among some election authorities.
Elsewhere in the country, other parts of the federal government also seem to be seeking more involvement in the election process.
According to Matt Crane, executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, in July, a consultant who said he had called on behalf of the White House on behalf of the White House, contacted 10 Republican County Clerks in July.
The consultant told at least two store clerks he wanted federal people to inspect the voting system. According to Crane, the lawsuit that would become a crime in Colorado without proper approval claimed that the third store clerk had received a follow-up call from another person with similar demands and called on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security.
“They placed the store clerks in a position where they could raise them on charges,” Crane said. “That was very worrying.”
