The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division is going on the offensive on election integrity, deploying election monitors to 12 jurisdictions as the 2026 midterms fast approach.
The push mirrors work already underway at the Republican National Committee (RNC), which has built out its own election integrity division, pressuring states to clean up voter rolls and tighten mail-in voting rules. The DOJ and RNC don’t coordinate directly, but the two are pursuing similar priorities.
Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, told the Daily Caller in an interview how her division plans to secure the 2026 midterms and beyond.
“It is our duty here at the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, and I think all of my colleagues here at DOJ and Senate-confirmed positions would agree, that we’re here to represent and protect all Americans, and do so on a nonpartisan basis, and that’s really how we focused our election work,” Dhillon said. (RELATED: Inside The RNC’s Push To Stop Virginia Redistricting — And Why It Still Fell Short)
Since the start of the administration, the division has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., over their failure to clean up voter rolls. In these cases, Dhillon told the Caller, they’ve found hundreds, if not thousands, of dead people and noncitizens still registered to vote.
Just this week, the DOJ notified 12 jurisdictions that it will deploy election monitors to their polling locations for their upcoming primaries, the Caller learned.
The jurisdictions include: Maricopa County, Pima County, and Apache County in Arizona; the City of New Bedford and City of Boston in Massachusetts; the City of Lansing, City of East Lansing and the City of Detroit in Michigan; Hennepin County and Ramsey in Minnesota; the City of Manchester and the City of Nashua in New Hampshire; and Fairfax County and Prince William County in Virginia.
“The Department sent these letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, asking for voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections,” a DOJ spokesperson told the Caller.
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon (C) arrives with former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) for a closed-door interview with the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill on May 29, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Some states have cooperated in cleaning up their voter rolls, Dhillon said, though there’s lingering whiplash from the Biden administration, which tried to prevent states from implementing even the most basic election integrity measures.
“States are not doing their job to remove people from the voter rolls, and I don’t blame the states — in part because sometimes they’ve tried to do it. Like Georgia passed a law after the 2020 election that improved their list maintenance, and they immediately got sued by the Department of Justice for taking people off the voter rolls. So it’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” she told the Caller.
The battle for election integrity recently hit a snag after the Supreme Court ruled in Watson v. RNC that states can count non-military mail-in ballots received days, and even weeks, after the polls close. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Trump To Crack Down On Mail-In Voting With New Executive Order)
Fourteen states currently allow non-military mail-in ballots received after Election Day to count, as long as they were postmarked in time. The deadlines vary widely: Texas allows one extra day, while Washington allows up to three weeks.
“I think people who care about this issue must go to Congress,” she told the Caller. “I’m not here to advocate for any kind of legislation — of course, that would be beyond my scope as a person here at DOJ — but I think that’s where the court is really pointing people: to close this loophole about what is Election Day, Congress can fix that. So they should, in my opinion.”
Authorities have caught an illegal alien voting in a federal election. pic.twitter.com/zFTHkNTG2v
— Reagan Reese (@reaganreese_) July 6, 2026
The Civil Rights Division’s election work extends beyond voter rolls, as well, including redistricting cases and efforts to ensure Americans overseas can vote.
“We’ve been weighing in where we think redistricting is unconstitutionally race-based. We are in litigation in California, for example, in their Prop 50 litigation, which was explicitly drawn on race-based lines. So we’re challenging that as an intervenor, and we’re extremely active on that front,” Dhillon told the Caller.
But the division doesn’t just aim to enforce laws, though the priority, Dhillon told the Caller, her team is helping states apply those laws, providing guidance and providing our expertise.
“Here we have decades of expertise in the Civil Rights Division, and I view it as a really sacred trust. To get this right, so really proud of the work we’re doing on this front, and proud of the lawyers who come from all over the country to join this effort, and it is very important to the Department of Justice to get it right, and we’ve dedicated resources appropriately,” she said.