Federal election monitors in Pawtucket find no problems with primary voting after past violations

Four federal election monitors were watching polling places in Pawtucket Wednesday to ensure city officials followed through on a Biden-era consent order to assist Spanish-speaking voters. 

They found no significant problems, said Pawtucket’s top election official who anticipates their return in the November general election.

“Everything seemed to go really well,” City Registrar Ken McGill said in an interview Thursday morning. “We sent out morning checkers from my office to make sure every polling place was up and running, and that they put all the signs up, both in English and Spanish.”

A May 2024 consent agreement reached between the city and federal government required local election officials to provide Spanish-speaking voters with election assistance and materials in their native language to settle a voting rights lawsuit by the Biden Administration.

The agreement was meant to resolve allegations that Pawtucket election officials failed to provide access to provisional ballots for Spanish-speaking voters, claims the city denied. 

The city faced more allegations after the September 2024 primary when Common Cause Rhode Island volunteers found six of Pawtucket’s 28 precincts missing Spanish-language signs. But no issues were detected when six Common Cause volunteers stopped in the city Wednesday as part of a routine monitoring of polling sites statewide during Rhode Island’s primary election, Executive Director John Marion confirmed in an interview Thursday.

“Nothing significant in Pawtucket — it was Providence that was where the big problems were yesterday,” Marion said, referring to the staffing shortages and technical problems that delayed numerous poll sites from opening in Rhode Island’s capital city.

The U.S. Department of Justice made its monitoring effort in Pawtucket public around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday  — around two hours after polls opened for Rhode Island’s primary election.

The department issued similar election-day announcements for the Massachusetts and New Hampshire primaries.

“Typically, they put out a kind of a generic release well before the election,” Marion said. “It was surprising that they put out a release on the day of.”

More surprising to Marion was the DOJ’s decision to focus their messaging on enforcement of the consent order, especially as the Trump administration has mounted a pressure campaign against Democratic-led states’ election management ahead of the midterms.

Several Democratic-led states have moved to restrict federal immigration agents’ presence near polling places and other election sites. Rhode Island lawmakers approved a measure on the final day of the 2026 legislative session barring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers from being within 200 feet of a polling place while voting is underway. 

No reports of ICE agents at Rhode Island polling places were filed with the state’s Board of Elections on Wednesday, spokesperson Chris Hunter confirmed in a text message.

Federal monitoring will continue in Pawtucket during the Nov. 3 general election, McGill said.

“I’m understanding that they’re going to have an observer at every one of the polls,” he said.

Pawtucket will have 30 polling stations open during the fall election.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Marion said the continued federal presence could be useful if it means the DOJ is ensuring Pawtucket follows the terms of the consent decree. But he said federal officials no longer “get the benefit of the doubt the way they used to.”

“They have to prove that they’re there for the right reasons now,” Marion said.