Federal election monitors are set to show up at polling places across Prince George’s County on Nov. 3, tasked with watching whether minority-language voting protections are being followed as Marylanders cast their ballots. The monitors won’t be allowed to talk to voters, intimidate them, or interfere with the voting process in any way, and they’ll be stationed in designated observation areas rather than roaming freely.
The Maryland State Board of Elections announced the deployment, confirming the monitors will be stationed in Prince George’s County for the Nov. 3 general election, according to WMAR-2 News. The monitors are there specifically to observe compliance with minority-language protections under the Voting Rights Act, the station reports. The Daily Record reports that the Justice Department is sending plain-clothed monitors into the county’s polling places.
The deployment comes while Maryland’s early-voting window is still open. Early voting continues through Thursday, Oct. 29, with centers open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m., the station notes. Election Day itself falls on Tuesday, Nov. 3, and mail-in ballots not dropped off at a box or local board office must be postmarked by that date.
What Monitors Can and Can't Do Inside Polling Places
The rules governing the monitors are strict. They must follow Maryland law while inside polling places, per the same WMAR-2 News report, and they are not allowed to communicate with or intimidate voters, nor will they wear Department of Justice identifiers. The monitors are expected to observe quietly and report back rather than take any active role in the voting process.
State Administrator of Elections Jared DeMarinis addressed the monitors’ presence directly. “Every voter has the right to have their vote counted and their voice heard in a safe environment free from intimidation, harassment or threats,” DeMarinis said in the announcement. DeMarinis also spoke about the importance of a safe voting environment.
A Nationwide Push, With a Local History
Prince George’s County isn’t an isolated case this cycle. The Justice Department plans to dispatch 1,000 election monitors to all 50 states on Election Day, according to PBS NewsHour, with a focus on high-population areas and locations with past language-access or disability-access problems. That figure is more than double the 388 federal monitors deployed during the 2022 midterms under the Biden administration, PBS reports.
The scale of this year’s rollout stands in contrast to past cycles. In 2022, the Justice Department monitored 64 jurisdictions across 24 states on Election Day, according to NPR. Federal compliance monitoring in Prince George’s County itself is not new either; the Justice Department has previously announced it would monitor compliance with federal voting rights laws there during early voting and on Election Day, according to a Justice Department press release.
Not every jurisdiction has welcomed the monitors in the same way. NPR reports that when the DOJ requested to send monitors to Minnesota’s Hennepin and Ramsey counties during the state’s August primary, those monitors were denied close access to polling locations — an example of the pushback some state officials have raised over the expanded program this year.
The Legal Basis: Section 203 Language Protections
The monitoring effort centers on Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act, a law enacted in 1965 that requires election materials provided in English to also be made available in the language of a minority group that meets specific population or literacy criteria. That obligation can be triggered when a single-language minority group exceeds 5 percent of the population in a jurisdiction, has more than 10,000 voting-age members, or has an illiteracy rate exceeding the national rate.
Covered jurisdictions that already provide election materials and oral language assistance in English must extend that same assistance in the required non-English language so citizens can participate effectively, according to Justice Department guidance. Separately, federal rules cited in the Federal Register state that Section 203 mandates language assistance when more than 5 percent of voting-age citizens in a single-language minority group do not speak or understand English sufficiently.
Should monitors observe something like voter intimidation on Election Day, the Justice Department has the ability to escalate the matter and work with local law enforcement, per PBS NewsHour’s reporting. For now, state officials are stressing that Maryland’s process remains unaffected. DeMarinis said the state board and every local board take election administration very seriously, and he described Maryland’s electoral process as verified, open, transparent and secure.
