DOJ Plans Record 1,000 Poll Monitors for Midterms

The Justice Department plans to send roughly 1,000 monitors to polling places across the country for November's midterm elections, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said.

Dhillon called it a historic deployment — a record for a Republican administration. The monitors will observe voting and feed follow-up investigations, but will not intervene at polling places on Election Day.

Federal monitors are already on the ground for Tuesday's primaries in Florida and Wyoming.

The Numbers

1,000 — monitors DOJ expects to deploy in November.

86 — jurisdictions across 27 states monitored in the 2024 general election under the Biden administration.

44 — jurisdictions monitored during the 2020 presidential election under the first Trump administration.

The Legal Authority

The Justice Department has long sent monitors to polling places to enforce federal voting rights laws, including the Voting Rights Act, which bars racial discrimination and voter intimidation at the polls.

DOJ says this year's monitors will watch for barriers facing voters with disabilities as well as suspected election fraud.

Staffing is the practical problem: more than 70% of the Civil Rights Division's career staff have left under Dhillon, and the department plans to fill the gap with volunteer federal employees.