DOJ Sends Record 1,000 Election Monitors to All 50 States After Judge Limits Who Can Serve
The Justice Department is sending about 1,000 election monitors and observers to polling places in all 50 states on Tuesday. The department calls it the largest monitoring effort in its history.
The Civil Rights Division is coordinating the effort, the department said. Monitors will come from the division, other DOJ components and U.S. Attorney’s Offices, along with federal observers from the Office of Personnel Management.
“I am very proud we are deploying the largest monitoring effort in DOJ history, and pursuing transparency for elections in an assertive and nondiscriminatory manner,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said.
The monitors will check compliance with federal voting laws, including the Voting Rights Act and the Help America Vote Act. A DOJ lawyer, Kathryn Barragan, told a federal court Monday that “in 2024, there were about 100 monitors,” CNBC reported.
The deployment goes ahead under limits set late Monday by U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton. He denied the NAACP‘s request for a temporary restraining order that would have blocked monitors from some federal agencies.
The NAACP had sought to keep out personnel from the ATF, the DEA and the Bureau of Prisons. It argued their presence could intimidate voters and violate the Voting Rights Act.
Walton, a George W. Bush appointee, found the record did not show the group was likely to win. But he ordered the department to keep its promise that monitors would be administrative or clerical staff, not sworn officers.
Under the order, monitors cannot be armed, wear uniforms, display federal insignia or have arrest powers. They may not speak with voters inside polling places and may talk with voters outside only after they have voted.
Monitors must also introduce themselves to election officials, follow state and local rules and carry federal credentials. Walton gave the department until 7 a.m. ET Tuesday to report how it had confirmed that none were law enforcement officers.
Appeals court reverses itself overnight
In a separate case, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals handed the administration a win Monday night and then took it back within hours, Fox News reported.
A three-judge panel had lifted a San Francisco judge’s order that bars the DOJ from threatening election workers with prosecution if they refuse to set aside ballots it suspects were cast by noncitizens.
Judges Carlos Bea and Consuelo Callahan found the government was likely to win.
The full court then voted to rehear the case en banc and vacated the panel’s ruling, which put the restrictions back in place while the case continues. The order did not set a hearing date, UPI reported.
“Conducting criminal investigations is a core function of the executive branch, not the judiciary,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli wrote on X before the reversal.
Critics say the federal push could chill voting. “First and foremost, it’s an attempt to intimidate voters and election officials,” John Cusick of the Legal Defense Fund told CNBC. Axios reported that some local officials have raised similar concerns.
The department says the monitors are there to protect election integrity. It has asked the public to report voting-rights complaints to its hotline at 1-800-253-3931 and to call 911 about any threats or violence at the polls.
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