The Justice Department plans to put about 1,000 of its own employees in polling places across the country on Election Day, Nov. 3, and has not yet said where. Civil Rights Division chief Harmeet Dhillon announced the figure Aug. 17, and by Sept. 22 she said the department was "pretty close" to it, calling it "the biggest DOJ election observer effort in history," according to the NAACP's federal complaint. The complaint says DOJ has never deployed more than 600 monitors in a prior election. Department spokeswoman Kiersten Pels told USA Today the full county list will come early next week.
Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the civil rights division of the Department of Justice, speaks at a September news conference.(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images / would)County clerks who have been told to expect the monitors say their counties lean liberal and have large Hispanic populations. Pels said the department prioritizes jurisdictions required to provide language assistance, areas short of election-observation data and places under consent decrees from earlier election problems. Josh Zygielbaum, the Democratic clerk of Adams County, Colo., who is also on the ballot, said he was told the monitors headed to his pol
