DOJ To Place 1,000 Staffers At Polling Locations In Every State - Some Of Them Criminal Prosecutors

The Justice Department plans to put about 1,000 of its own employees in polling places across the country on Election Day, Nov. 3, and has not yet said where. Civil Rights Division chief Harmeet Dhillon announced the figure Aug. 17, and by Sept. 22 she said the department was "pretty close" to it, calling it "the biggest DOJ election observer effort in history," according to the NAACP's federal complaint. The complaint says DOJ has never deployed more than 600 monitors in a prior election. Department spokeswoman Kiersten Pels told USA Today the full county list will come early next week.

County clerks who have been told to expect the monitors say their counties lean liberal and have large Hispanic populations. Pels said the department prioritizes jurisdictions required to provide language assistance, areas short of election-observation data and places under consent decrees from earlier election problems. Josh Zygielbaum, the Democratic clerk of Adams County, Colo., who is also on the ballot, said he was told the monitors headed to his polling sites are criminal prosecutors. "It's almost as if they're coming here to scrutinize the voter," he said. He added that in 2022, when DOJ sent monitors to 64 jurisdictions in 24 states, its voting rights attorneys helped his office with Spanish-language translations.

Clerks elsewhere say they were given no reason. "We were not informed as to who or what prompted this unique status," said Kate Sweeney Bell, the clerk of Marion County, Ind. "We were not told what criteria was used to make this determination."

The department's own account is narrower. Pels said every Election Day observer will be Justice Department personnel trained on state and local law, there to monitor, document and report, and not authorized to intervene. "Our monitors will not be questioning voters about their citizenship status at the polls," she said, adding that if monitors uncover evidence of noncitizens voting, "we will use it." In an Oct. 28 declaration in federal court in Washington, Voting Section acting chief Eric Neff wrote that no FBI or ICE employees will serve as monitors, though staff from the DEA, the Bureau of Prisons and the ATF will, unarmed and not acting as law enforcement, as we reported.

The NAACP says the Arizona primary points the other way. Its complaint, filed Oct. 16 in the U.S. District Court for D.C. (No. 1:26-cv-03626), says for Arizona's July 21 primary, DOJ sent six criminal prosecutors from the Arizona U.S. Attorney's Office to polling places in Maricopa and Pima Counties, and an FBI special agent to Maricopa. The department's Arizona page announced monitors in Maricopa, Pima and Apache Counties that day without saying who they were. The complaint invokes Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act, which bars intimidating voters, and argues that "there is no federal statute that gives Defendants the authority to turn polling places into interrogation rooms." It adds that the department "twisted the Poll Monitoring Program into a tool to pursue baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud." No hearing or ruling has been reported.

The August primary in Wyoming drew a Republican objection. Two monitors went to Laramie County on Aug. 18, and Gov. Mark Gordon asked the state attorney general to investigate. Gordon called their conduct "a bit aggressive" and "irregular," and said it seemed to exceed the authority Congress gave them. County Clerk Debra Lee said the monitors wanted to interview voters, which she refused, and asked for training guides and to examine tabulators. The department disputes that they did anything improper. State officials told USA Today no federal observer had monitored Wyoming voting in at least 40 years. For November, Lee said, the observers agreed to wear county-issued badges and stay at least 100 feet from the polls if they want to interview voters.

The deployment follows a campaign over noncitizen voting. On Aug. 17, Dhillon said some election officials were knowingly keeping noncitizens on the rolls, "This is a federal crime, and so we reminded people of that," and that the department had found tens of thousands of noncitizens on rolls in cooperating states, without naming the states or giving evidence, per Democracy Docket. On Oct. 26, President Trump offered $1 million to anyone reporting voter fraud, paid "upon the arrest and conviction of those that created the Fraud", in a Truth Social post that did not say where the money would come from.