DOJ's 1,000 Election Monitors Get Their Map: Detroit, Maricopa, Miami-Dade and Salt Lake Among Counties Put on Notice

The Justice Department has started telling counties where its election monitors will be standing on Nov. 3. The letters went out this week from the Civil Rights Division, the DOJ office that enforces federal voting laws, and they're part of what its chief, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, calls the biggest election-monitoring push in the department's history: about 1,000 trained observers spread across all 50 states, Reuters reported.

That's roughly triple the last midterm. In 2022, Biden's Justice Department monitored 64 jurisdictions in 24 states, according to NPR. This time the department says it will be in every state, "doing the routine election monitoring the department has done for decades," a DOJ spokesperson told WFYI in Indianapolis.

Who got a letter

The list is still growing, but here is what local officials and reporters have confirmed so far. In Michigan, notices went to Detroit, East Lansing, Flint, Grand Rapids, Hamtramck, Lansing and Warren, the state attorney general's office said. In Arizona, the secretary of state heard from DOJ about Maricopa, Pima, Apache and Navajo counties, PBS correspondent Liz Landers reported.

Colorado's Adams and Douglas counties got letters, CPR News reported. So did Hennepin and Ramsey counties in Minnesota, Miami-Dade in Florida, King County in Washington and seven counties in Texas, per NPR. Indiana's Marion and Lake counties are on the list, WFYI reported, and in Utah, Salt Lake County was notified, according to KUER.

Dhillon laid out the plan weeks ago. "This is going to be the biggest DOJ election observer effort in history," she said in September on Real America's Voice, per the Connecticut Centinal. The observers are DOJ lawyers and trained legal staff, and she said their job is "observing, making notes, you know, making sure that language accessibility is there, that disability accessibility is there, that nothing funky is happening, and that people are able to vote."

What the monitors actually do

Think of them as referees with notepads. They don't run the election, touch ballots or stop anyone from voting. "Every monitor has the same role: observe for potential violations of federal law and report concerns to the Department, which the Department will review after Election Day and act where appropriate," the DOJ statement to WFYI said.

What's new is what they'll write down. "If monitors observe any violation of federal election law, including voting by noncitizens, they record and report it to the Department," DOJ spokesperson Kiersten Pels told Reuters. That's a priority Dhillon has pushed hard: she said the department had "indicted and/or convicted 67 different individuals for election-related crimes" in a matter of weeks, and that "non-citizens who voted in a federal election canceled out the votes of American citizens," per the Centinal.

The department says it picks places with competitive races and places covered by the Voting Rights Act's language rules. Adams County, Colorado, was chosen because it must offer Spanish-language voting materials under Section 203 of that law, the DOJ told CPR. It also happens to anchor one of the closest House races in the country, the 8th District fight between Republican Rep. Gabe Evans and Democrat Manny Rutinel.

Democrats are watching the watchers

Not every state is rolling out the welcome mat. During Minnesota's August primary, about 40 state employees worked in pairs to shadow the DOJ lawyers through Hennepin and Ramsey counties, Reuters reported. Both counties used state law to keep the federal monitors 100 feet away from polling places, and Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, says the same could happen in November, he told MPR News.

Yet Simon admitted the monitors did nothing wrong. "I want to give them credit; we were there when they were there to make sure they were following the rules. And to be fair, they did in the August primary," he said. California has launched its own shadowing program, and its attorney general, Rob Bonta, called the federal government "the source of interference," per Reuters.

In Michigan, Attorney General Dana Nessel called DOJ monitors "a standard part of our election process" but warned her office "stands ready to hold accountable those who attempt to unlawfully interfere with or intimidate Michigan voters or election workers," in a statement.

Utah took a calmer line. Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, the state's top election official, said her office got the DOJ letter Oct. 21 and that the monitors will introduce themselves to poll workers, won't contact voters and won't be armed. "I was actually grateful to get the notice because a lot of times things just happen and we don't get advance notice," she told reporters.

What's next

The DOJ says it will share the final list of monitored places "closer to the election," NPR reported. Election Day is Nov. 3, with control of the House and Senate on the line. When the polls close, the monitors' notes go back to Washington, and Dhillon has made clear that anything they find will be acted on.