The Justice Department aims to send poll monitors to all 50 states in the 2026 midterms, marking an ambitious expansion of a longstanding federal initiative aimed at ensuring election integrity.
Details about the effort, announced in August, have been fairly sparse. However, a handful of both Republican and Democratic states in recent days have reported being contacted by federal officials about the matter.
Georgia became the latest such state to receive notice on Saturday that federal poll observers would be stationed in six counties, all of which are left-leaning. The DOJ is sending election monitors to Bibb, Cobb, Chatham, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Georgia is a battleground state featuring intense elections between Democrats and Republicans this cycle at the Senate and gubernatorial levels. GOP candidate Rick Jackson is rivaling Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms in the gubernatorial race, while Mike Collins (R-GA) is challenging Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) in the Senate race.
Revelations that poll monitors will be deployed to the Peach State in November come after Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, announced in August that the DOJ would send 1,000 observers nationwide, in what she termed “the largest monitoring effort” in the agency’s history.
Monitoring elections is a normal part of the DOJ’s duties. The department under former President Joe Biden sent roughly 400 monitors to 64 jurisdictions across around two dozen states on Election Day in the last midterm year, 2022.
However, the latest effort marks a substantial expansion of that effort, with more than double the election monitors to be sent nationwide. It’s unclear which jurisdictions or how many the department plans to monitor this November, with the DOJ telling NPR such details will be released closer to the election.
Where are poll monitors going?
States that have suggested the arrival of poll monitors include: Oregon, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, Texas, Washington, Utah, and Kansas. The DOJ has sent monitor notifications to seven Texas counties, Washington state’s King County, Florida’s Miami-Dade County, and Minnesota’s Hennepin and Ramsey counties, among other jurisdictions nationwide.
For instance, in Pennsylvania, four counties are set to be monitored by federal observers—in Philadelphia, Allegheny, Luzerne, and Lehigh.
In Colorado, Secretary of State Jena Griswold said the DOJ is seeking to send election monitors to Adams County, a northeast part of Denver. The Democratic official panned the effort, saying she believes it is aimed at trying to intimidate people. Adams County includes part of the state’s toss-up 8th Congressional District, which could determine party control of the House.
Some officials believe the DOJ is being weaponized to intimidate voters and destroy the integrity of the election process, the opposite of what the Trump administration has framed it as. Other officials have said the ramped-up observing effort is little more than a symbolic gesture.
Scott Schwab, Kansas’ Republican secretary of state, told PBS News this week that the DOJ’s effort is likely little more than a “feel-good” initiative. He confirmed he has heard from the DOJ in recent days about plans to monitor Kansas, but said personnel are “going to be looking from afar,” with monitors “normally half a building away from the elections processing and monitoring center.”
David Becker, a former voting attorney in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said the scale of this year’s monitoring efforts is “not normal, but I’m not particularly concerned,” adding that the agency does not have “blanket authority to be everywhere” and monitors must follow local and state laws about whether they are allowed inside a polling location.
What can poll monitors do?
Monitors are fairly restricted in what they are legally allowed to do. They can observe for potential violations during the election process, document what happened, and then report it to DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, which performs more of the enforcement and investigative follow-up action.
“They’re neutral observers. They have no role in stepping in and helping,” Dhillon said during an August interview with RealClearPolitics. “They can’t step in and change it.”
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The DOJ has framed monitors as necessary to ensure “transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law.” It says monitors must follow the same rules that apply to voters at the polling place.
“We will be in all 50 states…doing the routine election monitoring the department has done for decades,” a DOJ spokesman previously told the Washington Examiner. “All monitors must meet the same legal and ethical requirements, including that they not interfere with the voting process.”