​Federal officials reject ​Colorado’s conditions for election monitors in Adams County

The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday declined terms set by Colorado officials that would have restricted federal election monitor activities inside Adams County election buildings, and the department said the monitors would deploy to election sites but not enter them.

One of the conditions was that monitors would need to be accompanied by observers from the Colorado secretary of state’s office inside any polling location.

“My office provided reasonable restrictions on DOJ monitors, which they refused to accept,” Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in a statement. “As a result, the DOJ will not be allowed to enter voter centers in Adams County. It is illegal for anyone, including the DOJ, to intimidate or interfere with voters outside of voter centers. My office will take any suggestion of voter intimidation seriously and will act accordingly.”

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division first notified Griswold and Adams County Clerk Josh Zygielbaum last week about its plan to send election monitors to the county to check for compliance with federal voting rights laws around language and accessibility. Under Colorado law, the secretary of state’s office must approve official observers for elections. The office outlined the conditions of that approval in a Thursday letter to the department, which declined a short time later. It said the monitors would stay outside of polling locations and remain 100 feet from buildings, in accordance with Colorado law.

Justice monitors would have been limited to speaking only with the presiding election official at a polling center and taking notes from an area designated by that official. They would not be allowed to speak with voters, touch equipment or go to areas inaccessible to voters.

Those are basically the same conditions that Justice attorney Jake Bachand outlined in his request letter to state officials on Oct. 27. The letter was shared with Newsline by Griswold’s office. Bachand wrote that the four monitors would work in teams of two and cover between six and eight polling locations each. They would check that election materials are provided in both English and Spanish, that bilingual poll workers are available, that voters are allowed to bring someone to help them in the voting booth and that the entire polling location is accessible to people with disabilities.

“Our monitors will not be anywhere near voting machines or the voting area at any time,” Bachand wrote. “Our monitors will not be requesting to inspect machines, equipment, or poll books, and they will not be attempting to speak with voters inside a polling place for any reason. They will not be wearing suits, displaying credentials, or doing anything else that would indicate to the public that they are from the (Justice Department).”

When asked how the monitors will be able to check for compliance with voting laws from outside the building, spokesperson Kiersten Pels did not answer directly, writing in an email that “state or local approval is not required for Department monitoring.”

“Department monitors follow the state and local laws and rules that govern polling locations, and every monitor is trained on the rules for their assigned jurisdiction,” she wrote.

Justice wrote that the monitors would be James Freeman, an attorney who has worked at the department for three decades, as well as special assistant Atticus Yondorf, administrative specialist Ana Gomez Becerra and paralegal Charisha Cruz at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Denver.

It is common for the Justice Department to assign election monitors, but the larger scale of the deployment this year is different, as is the use of employees from the a criminal, rather than civil, office. The department plans to deploy around 1,000 monitors around the country. Adams County is the only jurisdiction in Colorado set to be observed by federal monitors on Tuesday. It is a Democratic-majority county in the state’s 8th Congressional District, site of a toss-up race that will help decide which party controls Congress.

Interference feared

The department said it chose Adams County because of its high number of Spanish-speaking voters, making it covered by Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act. Some state leaders, however, worry that the federal government is using the practice as a shortcut to find counties with significant non-English-speaking voters to investigate. Colorado’s Democratic congressional delegation wrote in a letter last week that the election monitor deployment is concerning amid other escalating actions by the Trump administration to control elections, including its lawsuit to access confidential Colorado voter information and efforts to limit mail-in voting. Many experts view those as an effort to interfere with results as Republicans are widely expected to lose control of at least the U.S. House and maybe the Senate.

“Adams County is committed to making sure every eligible voter has their voice heard, and election workers in my office will be ready to help any voter that needs it on Tuesday,” Zygielbaum said in a statement. “I look forward to serving the people of Adams County and having another great election.”

Earlier this week, Colorado clerks said they were united to protect elections against any interference from the Trump administration.

Election Day is Nov. 3. More information about how to register to vote and cast a ballot can be found at GoVoteColorado.gov.

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 1:50 p.m. on Oct. 29, 2026, to included comments from the Justice Department.