Justice Department to send a record 1,000 monitors to polling places in midterm elections

Key Points:

• The Justice Department plans to deploy a record 1,000 federal monitors to polling places across the U.S. for the 2024 midterm elections to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act, according to Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon.
• The department will recruit federal employees, including those from U.S. Attorney's Offices, to volunteer as monitors due to understaffing following significant career staff departures under Dhillon's leadership.
• The DOJ has filed 31 lawsuits seeking states' unredacted voter data to verify voter rolls and prevent noncitizen registrations, but courts have blocked data requests in 23 cases, and the government has not yet won any of these suits.
• Some states have expressed suspicion about the DOJ's increased monitoring efforts amid ongoing disputes over voter data access and concerns about election integrity, while the Department of Homeland Security aims to use voter information for criminal and immigration enforcement.
• The deployment of monitors and related DOJ actions come amid heightened political tensions following former President Trump's refusal to concede the 2020 election and ongoing FBI investigations into election-related matters in several states.