The Department of Justice announced Friday that it will monitor polls in 27 states, including all seven battlegrounds, on Election Day for compliance with federal voting rights laws.
The DOJ's Civil Rights Division will coordinate the effort across 86 jurisdictions.
The number of election monitors is the most since the 2004 election and represents a 49% increase from 2020, The Washington Post reported.
"Monitors will include personnel from the Civil Rights Division, other department divisions, U.S. Attorney's Offices and federal observers from the Office of Personnel Management. Throughout Election Day, division personnel will maintain contact with state and local election officials," the Justice Department said.
The announcement comes amid concerns over voter intimidation and the safety of election workers and in the aftermath of arson attacks on ballot boxes in Oregon and Washington. However, the DOJ is not sending monitors to either of those states.
Republicans in three states have said federal monitors are not welcome inside polling places. In the 2022 midterms, state officials in Florida and Missouri prevented monitors from entering polling locations. Texas officials also have signaled they won't allow the feds to enter polling sites on Tuesday, the Post reported. DOJ monitors are being sent to all three states, according to Friday's release.
"This certainly has become politicized," Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft told the Post. "The Department of Justice lied when they came in and used pretenses to try to bully their way in when they knew what they were doing was not legal."
Former DOJ voting rights lawyer Katherine Culliton-González, now a chief policy counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told the Post that monitors "go to places where there is a potential for problems."
"Normally, monitors have a very calming effect," she said.
Among the battleground states, the DOJ is sending monitors to six counties in Michigan, five in Georgia, four in Wisconsin and Arizona, three in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, and one in Nevada, according to the release.
"Complaints related to violence, threats of violence or intimidation at a polling place should be reported immediately to local police authorities by calling 911. These complaints should also be reported to the department after local authorities have been contacted," the release said.