The U.S. Department of Justice will again send monitors to polling locations in Manchester and Nashua on Election Day. Polling locations in the two cities were also visited by federal observers during the September state primary.
Election officials in those cities — the two largest in the state by population — were informed in an email sent by the Justice Department. The New Hampshire Secretary of State’s office was also notified about the plan.
“Our monitors only observe and take notes,” a prosecutor in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice wrote to Brendon O’Donnell, New Hampshire’s deputy secretary of state. “They do not intrude or interfere in any way in the voting process.”
Election monitors will be in plain clothes and will not carry firearms, the federal government said. They are also instructed not to talk with voters inside of polling locations.
While both Democrat and Republican administrations have sent observers to monitor elections in recent years, the Trump administration said it plans to have more than 1,000 observers spread across the country, the “largest monitoring effort in the Justice Department’s history,” according to Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the Civil Rights Division.
Local and state election officials from around the country have received similar letters announcing monitors, according to reports.
In New Hampshire, any member of the public can observe the registration of new voters, or watch the tabulation of results. They must, however, remain behind the guardrail which cordons off where votes are cast. Federal officials do not have any special authority to cross beyond the guardrail.
During the September primary in New Hampshire, monitors visited multiple polling locations in both Manchester and Nashua, with no reported issues.
New Hampshire’s Attorney General also performs election day monitoring, with plans to send more than 50 state prosecutors into polling locations next Tuesday.
Both political parties, as well as advocacy groups, also train and coordinate volunteers to visit polling locations.
