The Justice Department is dispatching federal monitors to polling areas in New Jersey and California, two Democratic states with essential off-year elections on Tuesday.
The announcement put the decadeslong federal monitoring apply below new scrutiny, as some Democrats and voting rights activists fear that this 12 months’s monitors might be used to undermine the voting course of or as a precursor to sow doubts about the election.
Election monitors, who’re Justice Department workers typically extremely skilled in voting legal guidelines, have been dispatched by each Republican and Democratic administrations, often in coordination with native officers, to sit at polling areas and look ahead to cases the place federal voting rights legal guidelines could have been violated.
But this 12 months is completely different, some specialists say, partially as a result of the election monitors are being deployed after requests from native Republican events. Those requests featured complaints of improper dealing with of ballots and different purported election irregularities as opposed to potential breaches of the Voting Rights Act.
DOJ officers insist that monitors are being despatched out in regular order.
Who, and what, are federal election monitors?
Federal election monitors are legal professionals who work for the Justice Department, usually both in its Civil Rights Division or in native US attorneys’ workplaces. They aren’t legislation enforcement officers or federal brokers.
The monitors are tasked with ensuring that federal voting rights legal guidelines are being adopted, together with the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits intimidation and threats towards those that are casting ballots or counting votes, and the Americans with Disabilities Act, which mandates that election officers guarantee folks with disabilities have the complete and equal alternative to vote.
While they might sound imposing, federal monitors aren’t there to implement legal guidelines. Monitors are allowed solely to observe and take notes. They can’t discuss to voters or ballot staff, don’t have entry to voting machines or ballots and aren’t concerned in tallying votes.
The monitors usually stay exterior polling locations and enter solely with permission from native election officers.
“You’re not to become part of the story. You’re not even supposed to fix problems,” David Becker, a former Department of Justice voting rights legal professional who now runs the Center for Election Innovation & Research, advised NCS. “You’re just supposed to take notes.”
Voters could not even bear in mind that federal monitors are current, Becker mentioned, noting that political events and particular person campaigns typically ship their very own monitors as properly.
During the 2024 presidential election, monitors had been despatched to 27 states. For the 2022 midterms, the DOJ monitors had been in 24 states. And in 2020, throughout President Donald Trump’s first time period, the division despatched monitors to 18 states.
While the dispatching of federal election monitors is routine, their targets this 12 months have amplified considerations from critics who say the Justice Department is utilizing federal legislation to promote Trump’s private agenda.
Becker, who was a federal monitor throughout a number of elections, advised NCS it’s extremely uncommon for the Justice Department to monitor polling locations for “ballot security,” an outline the division gave in a press release final month, because the DOJ usually watches for compliance with the Voting Rights Act.
Compounding considerations is that each states have high-profile races — New Jersey is dwelling to a race for governor, whereas voters in California are deciding whether to redraw congressional maps to create 5 Democratic-friendly seats.
California’s redistricting effort is a part of a nationwide scramble by political events to acquire the higher hand in subsequent 12 months’s midterm elections for the US House. Trump instigated the redistricting battle by pushing Republicans in Texas to draw five additional seats to profit Republicans in 2026.
After it was introduced that monitors can be despatched to California, Gov. Gavin Newsom claimed the Justice Department’s transfer was geared toward suppressing votes within the state. Earlier final month, California Attorney General Rob Bonta mentioned the state would deploy its personal observers to monitor the attorneys dispatched by the Justice Department.
“I don’t need evidence of irregularities. I simply need a basis to believe that it would be helpful for the DOJ to be there, and that’s it,” Harmeet Dhillon, who runs the division’s Civil Rights Division, told NCS’s Elex Michaelson. “We are not there to interfere. We are there to observe. We are there to document.”
But the division has to date taken at the least one extremely uncommon transfer: sending Dhillon’s deputy, Michael Gates, a high-ranking political appointee, to be one in all two monitors in Orange County, California.
Gates is the previous metropolis legal professional of Huntington Beach, California, and has been a vigorous proponent of voter identification legal guidelines. He additionally has been among the many Justice Department officers looking for voter roll knowledge from particular person states — a transfer that has brought about alarm amongst some state election chiefs who argue it quantities to federal overreach in elections.
“If they want to come, it’s fine,” Bob Page, Orange County’s registrar of voters, advised NCS. “Everything we do is transparent.”