DOJ close to recruiting 1,000 election monitors for midterms, Harmeet Dhillon says

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is close to fully enlisting the 1,000 federal election monitors it announced earlier this year to observe the upcoming midterm elections — the largest such contingent in U.S. history, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon claimed.

The monitors will be department lawyers and other “trained legal staff,” she said in an interview with the far-right media outlet Real America’s Voice Monday.

“I’ve called for, and plan to send, 1,000 to the general election jurisdictions that we’re selecting. And I’m really excited to say that we have — we’re pretty close to that number of people who’ve raised their hands,” Dhillon said.

“This is going to be the biggest DOJ election observer effort in history. And I’m so excited to be leading this effort,” she said. 

Dhillon leads the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, which has traditionally been responsible for enforcing voting rights laws. Under President Donald Trump, however, it has switched its focus to attempting to exert federal control over elections and making it harder to vote.

Throughout the interview, Dhillon incorrectly stated that the officials will be “federal observers.” In reality, the DOJ will instead be sending federal monitors. 

“Federal election monitors from the department are — observers, I should say — are similar to other types of observers you see, so they’re not going to be interfering in any way or running the election. They are going to be observing,” the assistant attorney general said. 

The distinction is important. Both observers and monitors watch election processes to ensure compliance with federal voting rights laws, but federal observers, established by the Voting Rights Act, have statutory authority to enter polling places at all stages of the voting process, from polls opening through ballot counting.

However, currently, the DOJ is only permitted to send observers to three places: Union County, New Jersey, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and St. Landry Parish, Louisiana.

By contrast, Federal monitors have severely limited authority to oversee election processes.  While monitors are meant to ensure compliance with federal law, it’s generally believed that monitors cannot enter polling places without a state’s consent, are subject to state election laws, and have to openly identify themselves as monitors.

Voting rights experts and former DOJ officials have questioned the Trump DOJ’s capacity to deploy 1,000 election monitors.

Democracy Docket identified some of the officials the Civil Rights Division sent as monitors for primary elections earlier this year.

They included William Mohrman, a longtime Minneapolis lawyer who repped the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of killing George Floyd before he was hired by the DOJ’s Voting Section.

The department also appears to have sent David Michael Levin, a Florida lawyer who pleaded guilty to illegally accessing government election websites in 2016, as an election monitor.