Justice Department: Election Day monitors deployed to every state for first time

The Department of Justice (DOJ) said Tuesday it is sending Election Day monitors to all 50 states.

In a press release, the department said it will go through with “its largest monitoring effort in history” Tuesday, featuring “approximately 1,000 election monitors and observers deployed, and, for the first time, in all 50 states.”

“Election integrity has been one of the top priorities for this Administration and this Division,” Department of Justice Civil Rights Division Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in the release.

“I am very proud we are deploying the largest monitoring effort in DOJ history, and pursuing transparency for elections in an assertive and nondiscriminatory manner.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D), whose county is listed among those the DOJ will monitor, shot back at the department over their monitoring plan, saying in a Tuesday statement “this is a baseless and dangerous attack from the Department of Justice on how states run their own elections and an attempt to intimidate voters into staying home.”

Last month , Attorney General Todd Blanche defended his department’s plan to send 1,000 election monitors to polling places for the midterms.

The federal government has monitored elections since the 1960s, and the DOJ will make sure federal law is being enforced properly, Blanche said on “Fox News Sunday” at the time.

“They’re not going to Republican states, they’re not going to Democrat states, they are going to every state to make sure our elections are carried out legally, fairly and appropriately,” he added.

Blanche went after Democratic lawmakers for “fearmongering” in asserting the department was attempting to intimidate voters.

Officials in several states have recently played defense against President Trump’s election fraud claims, as he has doubled down on them before Election Day.

Trump, in remarks to the country over the summer, claimed to have seen “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure.” The president pointed to a 2020 Michigan voter registration case, also going after California, suggesting the Golden State’s mail-in ballots were “floating aimlessly.”