DOJ Adds Monitor Teams in Colorado's Adams County, Says Full Nationwide List Won't Come Until Election Day

Since the Justice Department began telling counties where it wants election monitors for the Nov. 3 midterms, the open questions have shifted from how many monitors there will be to where they are going, and when anyone will find out. In Colorado on Thursday, Oct. 29, the department rejected the state's terms and added teams to Adams County. Its spokesperson now says the full list will be released on Election Day itself.

Colorado: terms declined, more teams added

Secretary of State Jena Griswold's office had proposed assigning its own monitors to accompany four federal observers the DOJ wanted in Adams County. The DOJ turned that down in writing.

"Thank you for your letter. While we appreciate your efforts to accommodate us, we will have to decline your offer," the department wrote. "Our monitors will remain outside of polling places and not come within 100 feet of the building in accordance with Colorado state law."

The DOJ then told Griswold's office it would send three more teams of two to Adams County. It again said they would stay at least 100 feet from any voter center.

Griswold, who is a candidate for Colorado Attorney General, said her office offered "reasonable restrictions" that the DOJ refused. "It is illegal for anyone, including the DOJ, to intimidate or interfere with voters outside of voter centers," she said. She added that her office "will take any suggestion of voter intimidation seriously and will act accordingly."

A DOJ spokesperson said "State or local approval is not required for Department monitoring," and that monitors follow state and local polling-place rules and are trained on the rules for their assigned jurisdiction.

Why Adams County, and who is going

Adams and Weld counties together make up the closely contested Congressional District 8. The DOJ has expressed interest in Adams, the more Democratic-leaning of the two, and not Weld.

A DOJ official's letter to the state said the department is "specifically interested in assessing compliance with Spanish language access under section 203 of the Voting Rights Act and polling place accessibility." Spokeswoman Kiersten Pels has said the department prioritizes jurisdictions that must provide language assistance, areas short of election-observation data and places under consent decrees from past election problems.

Adams County Clerk Josh Zygielbaum, a Democrat who is also on the ballot, said he was told the monitors headed to his sites are criminal prosecutors. "It's almost as if they're coming here to scrutinize the voter," he said. He also said that when the DOJ sent monitors to 64 jurisdictions in 24 states in 2022, its voting rights attorneys helped his office with Spanish-language translations.

The DOJ has not confirmed Zygielbaum's account of who the Adams County monitors are. Pels has said the department "never said that it would send federal law enforcement to the polls." Court filings, though, say monitors will include employees of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, ATF, DEA and CBP, limited to routine Civil Rights Division monitoring duties.

Democracy Forward, a legal advocacy group investigating the program, says the DOJ has confirmed plans to send criminal prosecutors to election sites for the first time and that they will not identify themselves as prosecutors. It points to Civil Rights Division chief Harmeet Dhillon's statement that monitors may go to "places where there may be voter fraud issues" and that there will "be prosecutions in the pipeline of people who voted illegally." The group argues this risks creating the kind of presence the DOJ once deliberately avoided.

Dhillon posted Oct. 23 that the department "will be eyes and ears for any violations, and may take legal action afterwards."

The list keeps slipping

The timeline for disclosure has moved. Pels told USA Today the county list would come early next week. She told NPR the details would be shared "closer to the election." The department has since told Newsweek and CBS Colorado it will release the full list on Election Day.

Kate Sweeney Bell, the clerk of Marion County, Ind., said: "We were not informed as to who or what prompted this unique status. We were not told what criteria was used to make this determination." Indiana says monitors in Marion and Lake counties stay outside under state law.

Three state officials told NPR, speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss it, that states were not notified at the same time as counties, as they were in earlier cycles.

How big is this compared with past elections?

Dhillon has called the 1,000-monitor plan the largest in DOJ history. The baseline figures differ by source. A DOJ official told PBS the department sent 388 people in 2022, while Newsweek and Democracy Forward put the 2022 figure at 289. Newsweek also cites 714 for the 2024 presidential election. The NAACP's federal complaint says the DOJ has never deployed more than 600.

Outside observers are split on how alarming that is. David Becker, a former DOJ voting section attorney, called the scale "not normal, but I'm not particularly concerned," noting the DOJ lacks "blanket authority to be everywhere" and monitors must follow local and state laws on access. University of Colorado elections law professor Doug Spencer said the Adams County deployment "does not feel out of the ordinary or inappropriate," though he noted "mistrust between states and the federal government at this time because of the politics."

Stacey Young of Justice Connection, a network of former DOJ employees, said the job has historically been "pretty passive."

Wyoming's Republican governor, Mark Gordon, said the two DOJ monitors at the August primary were "aggressive, unexpected, [and] disruptive." Pels said the department disagrees with that framing and that Dhillon met with Wyoming officials afterward.

The DOJ says the full list of jurisdictions will be released on Tuesday, Nov. 3, the same day polls open. Griswold has said her office will act on any complaint of voter intimidation outside Adams County voter centers.