Voters may find federal agents at their polling site on Election Day. Sangamon County Clerk Don Gray said his office was informed that representatives from the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice will monitor 19 polling sites in the county.
The announcement comes as the DOJ plans to deploy about 1,000 people to monitor elections in all 50 states, at least two times more than were mobilized under President Joe Biden in the 2022 primary elections.
Gray said outside observers from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Illinois Board of Elections and the Illinois Attorney General’s Office have always been present on Election Day but this will be the first time the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division plans to monitor polling places.
He said federal agents are routinely in larger jurisdictions such as Cook County and surrounding counties.
“This is just the first time they’ve come to us,” he said.
Gray, a Republican, said he’s not alarmed. “The Department of Justice has a longstanding history of monitoring elections nationwide,” he said. “So, they’ve always been a qualified agency for monitoring elections, especially since the federal government has federal elections at stake.”
Across the nation, civil rights groups have raised concerns about the possibility of federal agents showing up at polling locations as an intimidation tactic in areas with highly contentious races.
Karen Broquet is an organizer with Capital City Illinois Indivisible, a local chapter of a larger organization that is calling for citizens to take action if President Donald Trump interferes in the midterm elections and overturns the results.
She said Gray is correct that federal monitoring of elections is not new, “although historically they monitor states that were under Voting Rights Act oversight.” Illinois was never among the states listed, which includes mostly southern states.
“Federal election monitoring takes on a different flavor now in the face of the federal government’s attempts to keep people from voting, and to interfere with local elections, and to intimidate election officials by threatening them with jail, and things like that,” Broquet said.
“So, the concern is that these monitors are going to be there to find something to use as an excuse to either seize ballot boxes or challenge or try to overturn the results of the election.”
Broquet said she’s surprised the DOJ will have a presence in Sangamon County, a Republican-leaning jurisdiction located in a solidly Democratic state.
“Most of their efforts have been in local jurisdictions where the election is probably going to be either a really important one or a really close one, and Sangamon County doesn’t really fall under any of those categories for the midterms,” she said.
Gray said the DOJ has randomly selected the locations and his office has not been notified of their choices.
He said three teams of likely two people per team will be on hand to monitor compliance in the proper handling and processing of provisional ballots and ensuring access to the ballot for people with disabilities, under the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and other federal statutes.
HAVA entails “making sure we’ve got the proper disability equipment, that we’re properly advising those with disabilities of the form of equipment that we have available to them, and their opportunities to be able to effectively cast a ballot,” he said.
DOJ representatives will also be monitoring the language assistance provided at election polls to language minority groups that have limited or no English proficiency, as required under the Voting Rights Act.
But Gray said, “The third component is kind of an irrelevant monitoring.”
“If we were a jurisdiction that were subject to language opportunity, we would have to provide for our materials in that foreign language, etc. But we’re not one of those.”
Under the VRA, the number of limited-English proficient voting-age citizens who speak the same language would have to be greater than 5% for the language requirement to go into effect.
“We have not reached the threshold of enough demographic to provide for those resources,” Gray said.
He said he feels confident DOJ agents will find the office is in compliance. His office has invested in new equipment called ExpressVote that allows for people with varying abilities to cast a ballot.
Election monitoring is not limited to state and federal officials, Gray said, and he invites the public’s assistance in the same task.
“If anybody feels that they weren’t treated properly or something was incorrect or they’re witnessing something that they’re uncomfortable with or doesn’t feel like it’s part of the normal process, reach out to the election office,” Gray said.
“We take all those reports seriously, and we make sure that we follow up and handle any situation that needs to be handled,” he added.
However, he said his office expects less traffic than usual at polling places on Tuesday, Nov. 3, as more people have cast their ballots early. So far, the number of people who have voted early make up about 26-28% of total ballots that will be cast, a 12% increase from 2022, he said.
The Sangamon County Clerk’s Office can be reached at 217-753-6700.
