DOJ Plans Over 1,000 Election Monitors for Midterms, Democrats Demand Records After Wyoming Complaint

The Justice Department under Attorney General Pam Bondi, with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche also involved in the effort, says it will send more than 1,000 federal election observers to polling places for the November 2026 midterms. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon has called it "the biggest DOJ election observer effort in history," according to CNN, outnumbering the deployment under President Joe Biden in 2024.

That scale has triggered a formal records request from Capitol Hill. Reps. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., the top Democrats on the House Judiciary and Administration committees, sent a letter to Bondi, Blanche, and Dhillon demanding internal memoranda, training materials, and details on where monitors will be deployed and what they'll be tasked with doing, according to MS NOW, which obtained the letter first.

The Wyoming Complaint

The trigger was Wyoming. Republican Gov. Mark Gordon said the conduct of DOJ monitors during the state's primary was "a bit aggressive" and "irregular," and asked state Attorney General Keith Kautz to investigate, according to MS NOW and CNN. CNN reported that most jurisdictions hosting DOJ monitors during this year's primaries reported no issues, making Wyoming an outlier rather than the norm so far.

CNN also reported, based on records it reviewed, that several DOJ monitors deployed during the primaries had previously helped challenge Trump's 2020 election loss, and that another monitor had pleaded guilty in 2016 to illegally accessing a government elections website. CNN did not report evidence that any of this affected how those monitors performed their duties this cycle.

Dhillon told Real America's Voice the observers are "not going to be interfering with the election in any way," and that any problems would be handled "afterwards." Democrats aren't taking that at face value. "The DOJ must demonstrate that it is not misusing its election monitoring program in any way," Raskin and Morelle wrote.

DOJ election monitoring isn't new. The Biden administration sent monitors to polling places in both 2022 and 2024 to check compliance with federal voting rights law, per MS NOW. What's different this time is the scale, and a White House that has spent years alleging, without producing court-proven evidence, that past elections were stolen.

RNC Running Its Own Parallel Operation

Separate from the DOJ program, the Republican National Committee is training its own "special monitors" to inspect voting machines, record serial numbers, check security seals, and photograph results tapes, reporting anything unusual to party lawyers through a dedicated hotline, according to training materials from Wisconsin obtained by CNN. "Having you all on the ground, notifying us of issues, allows us to take direct action," an RNC official told trainees on a July call, adding that it "leads to real outcomes that benefit Republicans across the state."

Tammy Patrick, chief program officer for the National Association of Election Officials, told CNN some election workers feel overwhelmed by the growing monitor network on both sides. "It's like they're showing up looking for the body," she said officials have told her. That's a fair concern from people who run elections for a living: more monitors means more opportunities for minor clerical errors to get amplified into fraud narratives, even when nothing improper happened. CNN reported no evidence the monitoring efforts will disrupt polling places or block anyone from voting, and both the RNC and DOJ say their people will follow the law.

Brazil, Too

The scrutiny isn't confined to U.S. soil. Senate Democrats Jeanne Shaheen, Tim Kaine, and Peter Welch sent Secretary of State Marco Rubio a letter warning against U.S. interference in Brazil's tight presidential race between incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, according to a letter obtained by The Hill. No evidence of actual U.S. interference in the Brazilian race has been presented in these reports. The letter is a preemptive warning, not an allegation of a specific act.

Jack Smith's Own Rulebook

Meanwhile, records released through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Oversight Project show former Special Counsel Jack Smith's office pushed to fast-track a forensic video and audio conversion contract with Axon Investigate in the days before it indicted Trump over the 2020 election, Breitbart reported. Smith's records officer told Axon on July 12, 2023, "we are in desperate need of this software," and asked for overnight shipping. Smith's executive officer, Ariel McIntyre, briefly paused the order over internal approval procedures Smith himself had made stricter than standard DOJ policy, before authorizing it anyway that same morning.

The records don't establish wrongdoing, and no charges or formal ethics finding against Smith's office over the purchase have been announced. What the documents do show is that Smith's team moved with urgency and some internal friction over its own rules while racing toward an indictment, and that the government still won't disclose what it paid Axon, since DOJ treats the pricing as the company's confidential information. Fox News has estimated Smith's investigation cost taxpayers more than $50 million based on DOJ reporting. The documents surfaced days before Smith's scheduled appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer questions about his prosecution of Trump.

What happens next: Bondi, Blanche, and Dhillon haven't yet responded publicly to the Raskin-Morelle records request, Wyoming's state-level investigation into the primary incident is still pending, and Smith's Judiciary Committee testimony will be the first chance for senators to question him directly about the Axon contract and his office's spending under oath.