Election officials to cooperate with federal monitors
Election officials will comply with the federal government’s efforts to deploy observers across the country in the 2026 midterm elections.
The officials also encouraged voters to turn out and trust the processes in their local jurisdictions.
The U.S. Department of Justice plans to send 1,000 federal election monitors to locations nationwide, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said in September. The promise follows Justice Department efforts to send more than 100 monitors during the primary election season.
“They’re going to be observing, making notes, making sure that language accessibility is there, that disability accessibility is there, that nothing funky is happening and that people are able to vote,” Dhillon said in a video posted to social media.
Paulina Gutiérrez, the election commission executive director in Milwaukee, said she received an email from the federal government informing her office about the effort. Gutiérrez said she expects 12 observers to participate throughout the day.
“We requested that they abide by the state election observer rules, which they’ve agreed,” Gutiérrez said in a virtual press conference call.
Election observers in Wisconsin are required to notify an official of their presence and provide photo ID; they cannot engage in electioneering or starting conversations with voters and must remain in designated observer locations, according to the Wisconsin legislature.
Julie Wise, Director of Elections in King County, Wash., was also notified of the presence of federal officials in her jurisdiction. She said eight monitors will be sent to observe ballot counting, seven voting centers and 100 ballot dropboxes throughout the county.
“It’s been several years since we’ve had DOJ monitors, but this is something that we anticipated may happen. I have complete confidence in our ability to navigate this smoothly,” Wise said in a virtual press conference with The Center Square.
Carolina Lopez, executive director of the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions, said sending federal observers is a long-standing practice. The federal government has sent election observers to polling places since at least 1965, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act, according to the Justice Department.
However, some officials have criticized the administration’s deployment of election monitors across the country. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and New York Attorney General Letitia James said the administration is using federal observers as a “weapon.”
“It feels like the president is using this as another weapon that he deploys against states that don’t support him,” Ellison said in an interview with CNN.
Dhillon said she called for sending monitors in both Republican and Democrat-led states.
“They’re not going to be interfering in any way or running the election,” Dhillon said.
The election officials encouraged voters not to be deterred from casting a ballot. Wise addressed the Federal Election Commission outage due to hacking concerns. She said the outage will not affect the electoral process in Kings County or elsewhere.
“It’s important for folks to recognize that our election system that’s counting ballots is not connected to the internet in any way, shape or form whatsoever,” Wise said. “It’s on a closed air-gapped network and so there’s no opportunity for hacking into our election system.”
Gutiérrez also encouraged voters to be patient with election results. Wisconsin election officials will not begin processing absentee ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day.
She anticipated her office will handle more than 60,000 absentee ballots on Election Day while voters head to the polls. Alabama, Pennsylvania and Mississippi are also unable to process absentee ballots until Election Day.
“We’ve got over several hundred people that will be coming to assist us. They swear an oath to protect the Constitution of the United States in the State of Wisconsin to faithfully discharge their duties as election officials to make sure that these ballots are eligible and processed accurately and securely,” Gutiérrez said.
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