Justice Department to Send Federal Election Monitors to Utah
Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson announced on social media on October 22 that the U.S. Department of Justice has notified the state it will deploy federal election monitors to Utah ahead of the November 3 midterm elections, without specifying how many or which locations they will visit. Henderson outlined the rules the monitors must follow: they must comply with Utah laws governing poll watchers, identify themselves to election workers, and refrain from approaching or speaking to voters; they may not wear badges or insignia identifying them to voters, carry weapons, or interfere with election activities.
'We will be in all 50 states, including Utah, doing the routine election monitoring the department has done for decades,' a Justice Department spokesman told the Washington Examiner. 'All monitors must meet the same legal and ethical requirements, including that they not interfere with the voting process.' The deployment is part of the Trump administration's plan, announced in August, to send approximately 1,000 election monitors nationwide, a figure the administration touted as likely a historic number for a Republican administration. By comparison, the Justice Department under President Biden deployed monitors to 86 jurisdictions in the 2024 presidential election and 64 jurisdictions in the 2022 midterms, while President Trump's first term sent monitors to 44 jurisdictions in 2020.
Henderson had previously refused a federal demand for the state's unredacted voter rolls, which contain Social Security numbers and other information that must be kept confidential by law; the Justice Department then sued Utah and opened an investigation into her. Utah previously hosted Justice Department monitors in San Juan County during the 2018, 2022 and 2024 elections.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 犹他州议会大厦（Salt Lake City）。照片：GyozaDumpling，CC BY-SA 4.0，来源：Wikimedia Commons（File: Utah State Capitol Building in 2022.jpg）
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