M.D. Kittle writes for the Federalist about the Justice Department’s plans for keeping tabs on upcoming elections.
Last month, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon announced her office will be deploying 1,000 election monitors at polling sites throughout the country in November’s midterm elections. A Department of Justice official tells The Federalist that the monitoring effort could be the largest in DOJ history.
The official did not have details on precisely where the volunteers will be, but some hotspots immediately come to mind.
Monitors already have been serving on the primary election front lines, covering 15 jurisdictions in six states — Arizona, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Virginia. Twelve monitors were present at polls in Boston, New Bedford, and Lowell in Massachusetts’ primary elections earlier this week, according to the DOJ. The department has deployed more than 80 monitors at more than 200 polling locations in eight states this primary season.
Democrats have railed against the election integrity initiative, accusing the Trump administration weaponizing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Of course, past Democrat administrations have deployed their share of federal election monitors. In the 2022 midterm election, the Biden DOJ dispatched nearly 300 monitors to polling sites around the country, CBS News reported. In the 2024 presidential election, the DOJ sent 714 people to ensure compliance with federal voting laws 86 jurisdictions in 27 states.
“I’ve been a volunteer and private election lawyer in prior years and some of these jurisdictions are jurisdictions where I know I’ve got personal knowledge of there being problems in the past,” Dhillon told conservative talk show host Joe Pags last month. “So I think it should be a welcome sign in all jurisdictions that we have an eye on things … The more eyes we have on elections, in my opinion, the better because the more people will be confident in those elections. We all want that as Americans.”
