Ahead of elections across the country on Tuesday, some are voicing concerns over federal election observers being deployed from the Department of Justice (DOJ). Concern over workers from one political party or the other is nothing new.
What’s an election monitor?
“Usually, election monitors are independent individuals or from independent organizations who spend time in vote centers or polling places observing the operations of the vote center or polling place,” Michael Alvarez, political science professor at the California Institute of Technology, said to Straight Arrow News.
Those monitors are expected to ensure the electoral process is conducted in a fair and legal manner and to prevent irregularities.
Those workers rarely enter polling places and mostly remain outside.
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“You’re not to become part of the story. You’re not even supposed to fix problems,” David Becker, a former Department of Justice voting rights attorney who now runs the Center for Election Innovation & Research, told CNN. “You’re just supposed to take notes.”
Every state has its own rules regarding election monitors, including where they can be and who they can be.
“Sometimes they’re folks like ourselves, like academics,” Alvarez said. “Sometimes they’re from partisan organizations. Sometimes they’re from the federal government.”
2025 election concerns
The ones coming from the federal government to states like California and New Jersey have raised concerns among some Democrats and voting rights activists.
It’s not uncommon for the DOJ to dispatch these monitors. The difference here, according to some experts, is that the monitors are coming at the request of some local Republican parties.
“I think the concern with the DOJ poll watchers in this particular example, especially here in California, is whether they’re really going to be neutral, or are they going to be more disruptive and interventionists in the vote centers and polling places,” Alvarez said.
The DOJ insists the monitors are being sent out as part of normal procedures.
“Transparency at the polls translates into faith in the electoral process, and this Department of Justice is committed to upholding the highest standards of election integrity,” Pam Bondi, Attorney General, said in a statement. “We will commit the resources necessary to ensure the American people get the fair, free, and transparent elections they deserve.”
That release also mentioned they would monitor for “ballot security,” something that Becker flagged to CNN as highly unusual.
So, what’s the worst that could really happen?
“They can do things like challenge voters,” Alvarez said. “They could be obtrusive and literally challenge the vote center staff, or the poll workers, if they see something or they don’t believe that they’re doing their job in the way that they would like it to be done. So, they can disenfranchise people. They can cause disruptions in polling places. There’s lots of things that can happen.”
If that happens to you on Election Day, Alvarez said there are things voters can do.
“The easiest thing is to just look online for information about who to contact in the county elections office,” Alvarez said. “Call them or go to the Secretary of State’s website, and there’ll be numbers listed on their website to report issues like this, call them or send them in via email.”
Past concerns
Ahead of last year’s elections, with former President Joe Biden heading the DOJ, some Republican-led states refused to let DOJ monitors into polling places.
Those concerns even led to lawsuits, although monitors were eventually allowed in states like Texas and Missouri.
This issue goes back decades, including a 2008 report that dispelled a “poll watcher scandal” and federal workers being deployed as election monitors in the South Carolina runoff in 1996.
“This has probably been going on as long as we’ve had elections,” Alvarez said. “There’s always efforts that happen in different elections, in different places, where people and organizations will try to disrupt the process in polling places. It happens in different ways. But it’s a common tactic that we’ve seen many times in the past.”
While concerns may date back decades, only a few national incidents involved election monitors.
The FBI probed Republicans putting guards outside polling places at heavily Latino precincts in Santa Ana, California, in 1988.
“There are examples like that, and this is a common tactic that’s often used, especially at the entrances to polling places or vote centers,” Alvarez said. “Or when certain individuals try to check in to vote and verify their registration status, sometimes you will see people try to challenge them.”
More recently, a Texas poll watcher carrying a gun followed election officials into a ballot-counting location in 2022.
For the most part, election monitors have not caused major nationwide issues for voters, and Alvarez said that’s how it’s supposed to be.
“We literally stand there and look for those things, like, for example, we’re always concerned about accessibility of polling places,” Alvarez said. “When we find a problem, we don’t do anything about it, or really say anything about it, unless the folks who are working in the polling place are totally free to talk. Usually, what we do is we report it back to the election jurisdiction.”
