DOJ to Send Election Monitors to Six Georgia Counties

The U.S. Justice Department has notified six Georgia counties, Bibb, Chatham, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett, that it will station monitors there on Election Day, Nov. 3, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The newspaper said each county has recently produced solid Democratic wins.

The notices say monitors only observe and do not interfere in the voting process, the AJC reported. Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon said in August that the department planned to deploy about 1,000 monitors nationwide, according to the AJC. A DOJ spokesperson told the paper this is routine monitoring the department has done for decades.

Sherri Allen, chair of the Fulton County elections board, told WRDW that DOJ monitors were also in Fulton in 2024, that the county plans to meet with them, and that the visit is not surprising or unusual.

The AJC reported that some Chatham County staffers were alarmed, and that Democrats and some election officials are concerned given the administration’s efforts to expand federal control over elections. The AJC and Rough Draft Atlanta both noted that the FBI raided a Fulton elections warehouse in January and took hundreds of boxes of 2020 election materials.