Blanche defends DOJ’s plan to send 1,000 monitors to polls on Election Day

Attorney General Todd Blanche on Sunday defended the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) plan to send 1,000 election monitors to polling places on Election Day.

The federal government has monitored elections since the 1960s and the DOJ will assure federal law is being enforced properly, Blanche told Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday.”

“They’re not going to Republican states, they’re not going to Democrat states, they are going to every state to make sure our elections are carried out legally, fairly and appropriately,” he added.

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The attorney general criticized Democratic lawmakers for “fearmongering” in claiming the DOJ is trying to intimidate voters.

“This administration, President Trump, is doing the same thing that every single administration has done in our generation, in multiple generations,” Blanche said. “We’re making sure that federal law is being enforced appropriately.”

Trump has made election integrity a key part of his agenda, repeatedly doubting the security and validity of American elections. He has pushed Congress to pass his voter identification and restrictive mail-in voting legislation, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act.

The federal government has long deployed DOJ officials to polling sites to assure compliance with civil rights and voting laws. Blanche said the DOJ is hoping to have “a thousand or more” monitors stationed during November’s midterms.

The attorney general said the claim that “armed federal agents” will be deployed to the polls is “completely false.”