Justice Department readies about 1,000 election monitors for the November midterms
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said the Justice Department plans to deploy approximately 1,000 election monitors across the country in November.
What happened
Dhillon described the plan in an interview on Bloomberg's Balance of Power, saying the Civil Rights Division had sent monitors during the primary and would do so "to the tune of approximately a thousand election monitors in the November election, and this is just something that DOJ does", a total she told Bloomberg is "probably going to be a historic number for a Republican administration". The department has not released its final list of jurisdictions; Dhillon said it is considering places with potential language or disability-access problems and places where the department believes there may be voter fraud. It was not immediately clear who would make up the force: the Civil Rights Division is far smaller than the 1,000-person figure, and the department could potentially draw personnel from U.S. attorneys' offices and other components. CBS News reports that more than 70% of the division's career staff took early retirement or resigned amid concerns about changes to its mission under Dhillon's leadership, and that although she has since recruited more attorneys, it remains understaffed. The department's own release of 18 August states that it had "deployed over 75 monitors across five states and over 200 polling locations this primary season", that it was monitoring Miami-Dade County, Florida with approximately four Civil Rights Division attorneys and Laramie County, Wyoming with two, and that "during the 2022 midterms the DOJ sent monitors to nine states"; NOTUS reports that under President Biden the department sent poll monitors to 22 states in the 2022 midterms and 27 states in the 2024 presidential election. The two baselines are not reconciled by either source and are carried here in each source's own words. Democracy Docket records that DOJ election monitors generally observe polling-place procedures and assess compliance with federal voting laws, and do not administer elections, determine voter eligibility or direct local election officials; Bloomberg reports Dhillon saying the monitors' role is to observe and follow up with any investigations rather than to intervene, that they are trained on the same material used by previous administrations, and that the department sent monitors during this summer's primaries to four Democratic-leaning cities in Michigan and to Arizona. NOTUS reports the department has lost 23 of the 31 federal lawsuits it filed against states and Washington, D.C. to force jurisdictions to hand over unredacted voter registration data. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes has filed a public records request seeking to learn why the department deployed monitors in three counties during that state's primary.
Why it matters
The Civil Rights Division that runs the monitoring programme is far smaller than the 1,000-person figure it has announced, and more than 70% of its career staff have left; the department has not said who will make up the force or where it will go. Among the criteria Dhillon named for siting the monitors is the department's own belief that there may be voter fraud — in a year when the same division has lost 23 of the 31 suits it filed to force states to hand over unredacted voter rolls. Who the monitors are, and what they are directed to look for, is what separates a federal presence that protects voters from one that pressures the people administering the count.
Sources
democracydocket.com, union-bulletin.com, notus.org, justice.gov, cbsnews.com