Out of Indiana’s 92 counties, the Justice Department has picked two to watch on Election Day: Marion, home to Indianapolis, and Lake, which borders Chicago. Rep. André Carson, a Black Democrat who represents most of Indianapolis, says the choice is not an accident.
“Out of 92 counties in Indiana, Trump’s DOJ has chosen two counties with the largest populations of Democratic voters and Black and Hispanic voters to subject to ‘election monitoring,'” Carson said. “It’s no coincidence.”
The department’s Civil Rights Division notified Marion County’s election board that federal monitors will be there Nov. 3. Both counties are represented by Democrats in the U.S. House. The department’s email did not say why they were chosen, and Marion County Clerk Kate Sweeney Bell said her office was not told either: “We were not informed as to who or what prompted this unique status.”
The Justice Department says the monitors “only observe” and “do not intrude or interfere in any way in the voting process.” It describes the program as routine monitoring it has done for decades, and says monitors will be in all 50 states. Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita welcomed them as “another layer of accountability.”
The largest effort the department has run
Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the Civil Rights Division, has announced plans for 1,000 observers nationwide, which she called the largest monitoring effort in department history. In 2022, under the Biden administration, the department monitored 64 jurisdictions in 24 states.
Notices have gone out elsewhere. Counties named so far include Hennepin and Ramsey in Minnesota, Miami-Dade in Florida, King County in Washington, Adams County in Colorado and seven in Texas. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the department “knows it has no authority to monitor Texas elections and backed down when Texas stood up for the rule of law.” The department has not confirmed that. A spokesperson, Kiersten Pels, said the full list of jurisdictions will be shared “closer to the election.”
Josh Zygielbaum, the Democratic clerk of Adams County, Colorado, called his notice “potentially an intimidation technique.” Democratic senators including Alex Padilla and Mark Warner have also pressed the department to explain how it is picking places, saying monitors are being assigned disproportionately to Democratic-led states.
For Black voters, the question has a history. Before 1965, federal examiners were sent into the South to get Black citizens onto the rolls. The Voting Rights Act made federal presence at the polls a tool for protecting access. Whether an observer’s presence now steadies a polling place or unsettles it is exactly what officials in the counties named are asking.
Democrats and voting rights groups are preparing their own response. Common Cause, the ACLU and state Democratic parties plan to put hundreds of monitors at polling sites. Jane Kleeb, a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, said: “We’ve never done this before. But we’ve never had to deal with the president saying ballots may be seized or ICE agents put outside polling locations.” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis blamed “radical Democrats” for stoking fears about election security.
Early voting is under way in Indiana. Election Day is Nov. 3, and the Justice Department has said it will release more details closer to that date.
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