Justice Department Plans Record 1,000 Election Monitors for Midterms

WASHINGTON —

The Justice Department is planning to send 1,000 federal monitors to polling places across the country during the 2026 midterm elections, the largest deployment on record, Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general who leads the department's Civil Rights Division, told Bloomberg on Monday.

The Civil Rights Division has sent monitors to polling places for decades to check compliance with the federal Voting Rights Act, which bars discrimination and intimidation at the polls based on race, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability or other protected categories. In the 2024 general election, the department monitored voting in 86 jurisdictions across 27 states, according to CBS News. Those monitors have historically been the department's own civil rights lawyers.

Staffing Shortfall Behind the Recruiting Push

Reaching 1,000 monitors will be a stretch. More than 70 percent of the Civil Rights Division's career staff left through early retirement or resignation amid concerns about how Dhillon has reshaped the division's mission, CBS News reported. Dhillon has hired new attorneys since then, but the division remains short-staffed. A Justice Department spokesperson told CBS News the agency will ask federal employees, including staff in U.S. Attorney's offices around the country, to volunteer for the effort.

The department has not released a full list of where the monitors will go. That is expected to come after primary elections wrap up. This week, the department said it was sending monitors to primary voting in Miami-Dade County, Florida, and Laramie County, Wyoming.

States Wary Amid Data Fight

The expanded monitoring push lands amid friction between the Justice Department and state election officials. The Civil Rights Division has filed 31 lawsuits seeking unredacted voter rolls from states, arguing it needs the data to make sure lists are accurate and that noncitizens are not registered, according to CBS News. States have pushed back, saying the lawsuits are designed to sow doubt about the fairness of elections. Courts have blocked the department's requests in 23 of those cases, and the government has yet to win a single one, CBS News reported. Separately, the Department of Homeland Security wants access to the same voter data for immigration and criminal enforcement.

The monitoring plan also comes against the backdrop of President Trump's continued, evidence-free claims that he lost the 2020 election because of fraud. The FBI has opened criminal investigations tied to the 2020 results in Fulton County, Georgia, and in Arizona, according to CBS News. In Arizona, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes has filed a public records request seeking to find out why the Justice Department sent monitors to three counties during that state's primary.