DOJ Loses Two Dozen Voter Roll Suits, Still Sends 1,000 Monitors

Washington is bracing for a messy midterm fight, and the Justice Department is already in the thick of it. The department has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for their voter registration lists — and lost more than two dozen of those cases. Its latest snub came just a day before election day, when the Supreme Court rejected a bid to set aside ballots from about 20,000 people in California suspected of being non-citizens. Washington state, facing a similar demand over more than 400 voters, also refused.

Trump set the tone, repeatedly questioning US election integrity and urging his party to 'nationalize' voting in at least 15 places as Republicans face an uphill battle to keep Congress. The White House frames its moves as protecting election security. But many of the feared scenarios remain hypothetical — the Constitution gives the president no direct role in running elections, and courts have so far rebuffed the administration's main legal challenges.

The DOJ is still going big on the ground: roughly 1,000 election monitors are headed to all 50 states, the largest deployment ever. The department says they will be unarmed, barred from interfering with voting and drawn from neither the FBI nor ICE. Democrats and voting rights groups aren't reassured — they fear the monitors could intimidate voters at the polls.

Alongside the lawsuits, the department has warned election officials in every state that they could face prosecution if they knowingly let non-citizens vote. Trump has dangled $1 million for information leading to a voter fraud conviction, without giving details. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has said ICE agents could serve warrants at polling places, though the administration insists it has no plans to target them. Trump has also declined to rule out a national emergency or the Insurrection Act to deploy troops at home — though a Civil War-era law bars troops and armed federal agents from polling places, and legal experts say an emergency declaration wouldn't hand him power over elections.

Federal agents could still chase ballots, voting machines or records through warrants or subpoenas — a move election officials warn could scramble the safeguards tracking how ballots are handled mid-count. In January, the FBI seized ballots and other 2020 election records in Fulton County, Georgia, a focus of Trump's false claims that he won that year. Trump could also cry fraud over mail-in ballots or votes counted after election night, though the Supreme Court ruled in June that states may count mail ballots postmarked by election day that arrive later.

The DOJ has sued Alaska to delay certification of its Senate race if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan narrowly loses to Democrat Mary Peltola, citing a second candidate with the same name. Trump said he ordered the lawsuit; experts say federal law doesn't let the department block certification. Courts have repeatedly upheld states' authority over elections, and Democrats and voting rights groups have built legal teams ready to fight back.