DOJ Monitors Hit Westville, Annex

By Thomas Breen, New Haven Independent

NEW HAVEN, CT — Zachary Denver showed up at Davis Street School at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday not to vote — but to ask voters questions.

That was the first reported sighting of a planned Trump administration operation in New Haven. It wasn’t the last.

The administration had informed state and local officials on Oct. 21 that it would send two teams of two Department of Justice (DOJ) monitors to the polls in the city on Election Day. No other city in Connecticut was set to receive such visits, according to the secretary of the state’s office.

Davis Street is the Ward 26 polling place in Upper Westville. Denver — an assistant U.S. attorney based in New Haven’s office — stood in the parking lot for an hour. He approached 10 voters and interviewed three, according to Ward 26 Alder Amy Marx and Democratic Ward Co-Chair Laura Cahn.

There was also a report of a monitor at the Ward 27 polling place in Westville and at the Ward 13 and 17 polling places in the Annex and Fair Haven Heights.

“He was just skulking nearby my vehicle. I was voting, getting in my car,” said Rose Chadwell, who encountered Denver after casting her ballot at Davis Street. “He seemed reasonable.”

Chadwell said Denver identified himself as working in a “civil rights” office. He had on “no uniform. Just regular, laid back. “A white guy with a nice haircut.”

Marx and Cahn said they approached Denver. He at first would not identify himself, they said. Eventually he did and they took a photo of his badge.

“His presence was quiet and not obtrusive,” Marx said.

“Nonetheless,” she said, it sent “a chilling message that we’re being watched by the federal government. It is extremely disconcerting that he refused to tell us who he was and what he was doing” at first. The monitor did not enter the polling place, they said.

A second voter told the Independent that he asked about what “signage” was inside the polling area, and if “anything prevented you from voting.”

A third voter, Aly Fox, said she encountered Denver at the Mauro-Sheridan polling place Tuesday morning. (She said that Denver did not identify himself by name, but he did identify himself as working for the DOJ. She recognized him as Denver based on a photos the Independent published in this article above.)

“He was asking about accessibility, if there were stairs, any issues getting to the polling place, asking if there was adequate signage,” Fox said. He asked if there were signs “in multiple languages, then asked about physical accessibility” of the polls. He also asked if he could have Fox’s email address in case he had any follow-up questions.

“It was surprising,” Fox said about the encounter. She said she had been listening to NPR on her drive to the polls and had heard about how unlikely it would be for voters to encounter DOJ monitors today.

A DOJ email identified Denver as the “team lead” in Tuesday’s monitoring operation in New Haven. His LinkedIn page states he joined the New Haven office in May and graduated New York University law school in 2013.

Update: In an email comment on Tuesday morning, DOJ spokesperson Kiersten Pels told the Independent that the DOJ “will be in all 50 states doing the routine election monitoring the department has done for decades.”

She said that the DOJ will have around 1,000 monitors in counties throughout the country. “Every monitor will merely observe and report any potential violations of federal law to the Department, which will be reviewed after Election Day.”

She continued, “All monitors must meet the same legal and ethical requirements, including that they not interfere with the voting process. Every monitor has the same role: observe for potential violations of federal law and report concerns to the Department, which the Department will review after Election Day and act where appropriate.”

And why did the DOJ single out New Haven as the only municipality in Connecticut that it is sending election monitors to on Tuesday?

“The monitors are there to help ensure voting rights for Spanish speakers, as well as help the distribution of translated election materials in both languages,” Pels wrote.

She continued, “New Haven, Connecticut was chosen for compliance with Sections 11(b) and 203 of the VRA, 52 U.S.C. §§ 10307(b), 10503, and Section 302 of HAVA, 52 U.S.C. § 21082(a).” She said that New Haven has a voting age population of 104,185 people and “is covered for Spanish language pursuant to Section 203.”

This story will be updated during the day.

Paul Bass contributed to this story.

The New Haven Independent is a not-for-profit public-interest daily news site founded in 2005.