The US Department of Justice has informed three Ohio county boards of elections that the federal government will be sending monitors to observe next week’s election. It's part of what is expected to be the DOJ's largest-ever election monitoring effort, with the agency planning to send monitors to all 50 states.
The Boards of Elections in Franklin, Medina and Cuyahoga Counties were emailed letters informing them the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ intends to send election monitors to those jurisdictions.
The letter’s author, trial attorney James Catania, identified himself as the regional coordinator supervising those monitors. He said they will only observe elections operations, and won’t intrude or interfere in any way in the voting process.
It’s unclear exactly why the monitors will be coming, but the letters say they’ll be checking for compliance with federal laws such as the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act, the Uniformed and Overseas Absentee Voting Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. While elections monitors have been deployed for years, there are concerns about this action as President Trump has moved to assert greater federal control over elections.
For Cuyahoga County, this isn’t new. The DOJ sent federal monitors to Cuyahoga County in 2020, 2022 and 2024, along with deployments to other states.
