The Justice Department plans to send about 1,000 election monitors to polling places in all 50 states on Nov. 3, its largest monitoring effort ever, according to PBS News, and it told a federal court this week that none of them will be FBI or ICE employees, according to The Hill and Bloomberg Law.
The assurance came in a sworn declaration filed Wednesday by Eric Neff, acting chief of the Voting Section in the department’s Civil Rights Division, in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the NAACP in federal court in Washington, Bloomberg Law reported. The division “is not engaging any sworn law enforcement personnel who are legally authorized to effectuate an arrest to act as monitors in a ‘law enforcement agent’ capacity,” Neff wrote, according to Bloomberg Law.
No FBI or US Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees are serving as election monitors for this year’s midterm elections, a top official within the Justice Department’s voting section said in a court filing. https://t.co/kKMxIypYju
— Bloomberg Law (@BLaw) October 29, 2026
According to The Hill, the declaration says employees of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Drug Enforcement Administration will serve as monitors. Bloomberg Law reported that Neff said one Customs and Border Protection employee detailed to the Justice Department will take part, and that the division is not aware of any other Homeland Security employees participating.
Watch, take notes, stay out of the way
The filing lays out strict ground rules. Monitors are prohibited from carrying firearms and will not act as law enforcement while on duty, The Hill reported. According to The Hill, the filing says monitors have been trained not to interfere in voting and to follow all rules of their assigned state or jurisdiction, and that their primary role is to observe, take notes and interview willing voters outside polling places.
Neff wrote that the Voting Section is monitoring “in a similar manner and for similar purposes as in past election cycles going back decades,” Bloomberg Law reported.
That history matters. PBS News reported that the Biden Justice Department sent 388 monitors to polling places during the 2022 midterms, a figure a DOJ official confirmed to the outlet. This year’s planned deployment is more than double that number, according to PBS.
Where the monitors are going
A senior Justice Department official told reporters the department will focus on high-population areas “because that’s where the most voters are,” and on jurisdictions with past problems such as language and disability access, PBS News reported. The monitors will not be deployed to early voting sites, according to PBS. DOJ spokesperson Kiersten Pels said a full list of locations will not be shared until Election Day, KCRA reported.
Counties have already started receiving notices. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Cobb, Chatham and Bibb counties in Georgia were notified. KCRA reported that notices also went to Philadelphia, Allegheny, Luzerne and Lehigh counties in Pennsylvania, to Portland and Lewiston in Maine, and to Manchester and Nashua in New Hampshire, among others.
Pels told KCRA that monitors will “merely observe” and report any potential violations of federal law to the department, which will review those reports after Election Day.
Democrats push back on observers
Voting rights advocates and Democratic lawmakers have raised concerns that the administration could send immigration agents or other federal law enforcement to polling sites, Bloomberg Law reported. The court filing now puts those claims on the record as false for FBI and ICE personnel.
State officials have responded in different ways. Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican, told PBS that federal monitors can enter a polling location like anyone else but cannot go behind the voter ID checkpoint, adding, “They’re going to be looking from afar.”
Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3.
Sources
Sources cited
- https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6181183-justice-department-fbi-ice-poll-monitors/
- https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/doj-says-fbi-ice-agents-wont-be-stationed-at-polls-next-week
- https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/doj-has-monitored-elections-for-decades-heres-why-some-state-officials-are-concerned-this-year
- https://www.kcra.com/article/what-are-election-monitors-get-the-facts-on-the-dojs-record-deployment/74253316
- https://www.ajc.com/politics/2026/10/georgia-democratic-counties-monitor-elections/
Sources
- Original post: Bloomberg Law (@BLaw) on X, Oct 29, 2026
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