DOJ to send election monitors to six Georgia counties

The U.S. Department of Justice will send Election Day monitors to six Georgia counties, all of which are considered Democratic strongholds. But election officials so far say they do not see the move as unusual. 

Last month, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon announced that roughly 1,000 monitors would be deployed across the country in what she called “the biggest DOJ election observer effort in history.” In Georgia, those monitors will be dispatched to Bibb, Chatham, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties. 

Their job, she said, would be to observe the elections process alongside other poll monitors.

“They’re not going to be interfering in any way or running the election,” she said. “They’re going to be observing, making notes, making sure that language accessibility is there, that disability accessibility is there, that nothing funky is happening and that people are able to vote.”

The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment Monday.

Outgoing Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said that Georgia’s election process will be open and transparent, and he said that poll watchers from both major political parties and the Carter Center will be monitoring elections alongside DOJ officials. 

“It’s a transparent process, and we’re not concerned at all,” he told reporters on Monday.

Three Georgia counties flagged by Trump administration for using non-English election materials

This is also not the first year that Department of Justice lawyers have monitored Georgia’s elections. Many of the same counties that are receiving monitors this year were also observed during the presidential election in 2024. However, the prospect of federal monitoring may be raising more concerns this year in the wake of the Trump administration’s attempts to exert greater influence over election administration. Just this year, federal officials have seized 2020 election materials from Fulton County, attempted to gain unrestricted access to sensitive voter data and compiled a report of counties that offer election materials in multiple languages.

All six of the selected counties are also counties that presidential candidate Kamala Harris won in 2024. 

But county election workers, including Fulton County Elections Board Chair Sherri Allen, have not raised concerns about the prospect of federal officials monitoring the election. In a press conference Monday, Allen said that the county has scheduled a meeting with federal officials to discuss the monitoring.

“We are planning to meet with them about the nature of their observation, but we are not surprised by it and it’s not unusual,” Allen said.

Thomas Gillon, the Bibb county elections supervisor, also appeared unfazed by the prospect of federal monitoring.

“The DOJ sent a similar team to monitor our November 2024 election, and nothing interesting happened,” he said. “I suspect nothing interesting will happen again this year.”