The Justice Department announced Tuesday that it is sending 1,000 federal election monitors to polling places across the United States. The deployment will cover races in all 50 states, including Texas, Georgia, Michigan, Maine, Iowa and Minnesota.
According to the department, the monitors will include staff from its Civil Rights Division, other DOJ offices and components, U.S. attorneys’ offices, and federal observers from the Office of Personnel Management. Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon said personnel would remain in contact with state and local election officials throughout Election Day. The announcement also provided a tip line for reporting suspected election-law violations.
NBC Connecticut and other local outlets reported that the monitors would be in plain clothes and would not be identified as DOJ or law-enforcement personnel. The article also noted that many locations selected for monitoring are in heavily Democratic districts or counties.
The deployment comes as Trump has made fraud allegations about contested races and said in October that he would accept the results if he considered them “honest.” His administration accused Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola of fraud over her campaign’s reported recruitment of a candidate with the same name as Republican Dan Sullivan. Trump called for both candidates to be barred from running. On Monday, a federal judge dismissed an administration lawsuit seeking to qualify the certification of Alaska’s results if Sullivan loses.
Trump has also alleged that fraud is taking place in Los Angeles and again criticized the 2020 election. The Justice Department’s announcement comes as Republicans are expected to lose control of the House, while their Senate majority is also at risk.
Sources: Rolling Stone.