Justice Department Will Send a Record 1,000 Monitors to Polling Places — After Losing More Than 70% of Its Civil Rights Career Staff

Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general who runs the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, said in remarks to Bloomberg on Monday, Aug. 17, 2026 that the department plans to deploy about 1,000 federal monitors to polling places for the November midterms. A department official told CBS News that 289 monitors were sent in the 2022 midterms and 714 in 2024. A DOJ spokesperson said the department will seek federal employees to volunteer, recruiting from DOJ and U.S. Attorney's Offices.

Poll monitoring is a longstanding Civil Rights Division function under the Voting Rights Act. New here are the scale and the context: the division has lost more than 70% of its career staff to early retirement or resignation and remains understaffed, and it has filed 31 lawsuits seeking states' unredacted voter rolls. Judges have blocked 23 of those requests and the division has not prevailed in any. DHS wants the same data for immigration enforcement.

The department said Tuesday it was sending monitors to primary polling places in Miami-Dade County, Florida, and Laramie County, Wyoming. November locations are expected once the primaries conclude. Arizona's secretary of state has filed a records request seeking the reasons for monitoring three counties there.