Federal election monitors planned for Fulton County

Federal election monitors will be in Fulton County for the Nov. 3 election, and local officials plan to meet with them to discuss how they will observe voting.

Fulton is one of six Georgia counties included in what the U.S. Department of Justice describes as its largest planned election-monitoring deployment. The others are Bibb, Chatham, Cobb, DeKalb and Gwinnett, the Georgia Recorder reported Oct. 26.

For Alpharetta and Milton residents, the deployment brings federal monitors to the county election system through which they vote. Officials have not specified how many monitors will work in Fulton or which polling locations they will visit.

Fulton County Elections Board Chair Sherri Allen said the county was not alarmed by the announcement. At an Oct. 26 press conference, she said the board had arranged to discuss the monitoring with federal officials.

“We are not surprised by it and it’s not unusual,” Allen said, according to the Georgia Recorder.

DOJ plans to send roughly 1,000 monitors nationwide for the midterm elections. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the department’s Civil Rights Division, said they would observe voting alongside other poll watchers rather than run elections.

All six Georgia counties selected for monitoring supported Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, the Georgia Recorder reported.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the process is transparent and that he was not concerned about the deployment. Poll watchers from both major parties and the Carter Center will also observe voting, he said.

The DOJ personnel are distinct from federal observers operating under court-authorized monitoring arrangements. Staff monitors generally need permission from local election officials to enter polling places and must follow applicable state rules, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

The NAACP has sued for access to DOJ records about the monitoring effort, raising concerns about potential voter intimidation. A federal court denied its emergency request for expedited processing of those records on Oct. 22. That ruling concerned the records request, rather than a request to stop monitors from deploying, according to an Oct. 26 court filing.

Federal monitoring is familiar to Fulton County. DOJ staff also monitored voting procedures in Fulton, Cobb, DeKalb and Gwinnett during the November 2024 general election.

Early voting for the Nov. 3 election continues through Friday, Oct. 30. Remaining weekday hours are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., according to Fulton County’s voting locations page.

Nearby locations include: