The Mechanics of Election Integrity: A Conversation with Harmeet Dhillon

The Department of Justice is sending election monitors into four Michigan jurisdictions—Detroit, East Lansing, Lansing, and Hamtramck—and has issued letters to election officials in all fifty states warning that they face criminal prosecution if they knowingly allow non-citizens to vote. Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, explains that this isn't a novel power grab: the DOJ has sent election monitors under both Republican and Democratic administrations for decades. What's different is that Republicans are now the ones enforcing the law, and the reaction from critics reveals more about political discomfort than about legal overreach.

The Mechanism of Election Monitoring

Dhillon describes a layered system. Federal election monitors have the legal right to enter polling places and counting centers without permission—a right established under federal voting law. But these monitors are not a substitute for what political parties do themselves. In 2024, Dhillon personally ran the Republican operation in Arizona, where dozens of credentialed volunteers observed the process alongside hundreds of Democratic volunteers. The federal monitors add an additional layer of eyes and ears, with the authority to take swift action when irregularities surface.