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The proposed constitutional amendments are posted at a City Hall voting precinct Tuesday, November 3, 2026, in Lafayette, La.

 STAFF PHOTO BY LESLIE WESTBROOK

Election monitors from the U.S. Department of Justice visited polling locations Tuesday in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Lafayette turned out for a heated midterm election with control of Congress on the line.

The unprecedented monitoring effort, which dispatched 1,000 Justice Department employees to polling stations across every state, worried some election administrators and Democratic officials who feared it could become a tool for the Trump administration to interfere in election results.

In Louisiana, though, the effort appeared to cause little controversy as votes trickled in. Wearing plainclothes, the monitors have mostly observed and asked election administrators about their training, officials said. Some took notes before moving on to the next polling site.

“They asked, ‘What kind of training do you have?’ and ‘Do you speak more than one language so you can assist voters?’” said Danae Columbus, a spokesperson for the Orleans Parish Clerk of Court.

Monitors visited polling sites in New Orleans’ Lakeview, Tremé and Central City neighborhoods on Tuesday morning. They appeared in Baton Rouge at a voting location in a Government Street firehouse. Lafayette’s chief elections official said he saw two of them Lafayette High School early Tuesday.

There have been “no issues” with the monitors, said Brandon Abadie, the East Baton Rouge Parish elections administrator.

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Lois LaBeaud, left, prepares a voting machine before the polls open at New Zion Baptist Church in New Orleans on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. STAFF PHOTO BY BRETT DUKE

Federal monitors have long visited voting sites on election days. But this effort came on the heels of the Trump administration’s broad push to insert the federal government into state-run elections, including by demanding access to state voter rolls, arresting people for voting illegally and filing preemptive legal challenges to the election’s results in some jurisdictions.

The Justice Department sent letters to elections officials in recent weeks, including Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry, threatening criminal charges if noncitizens are found to have voted in their states. (A Republican, Landry has worked closely with the Justice Department to prosecute noncitizens accused of voting, her office has said.)

"The Justice Department has a duty to ensure federal actions don't scare voters away or interfere with the state administration of elections,” said Stacey Young, a former senior official in the Civil Rights Division who founded Justice Connection, an organization for former DOJ employees.

“Continuing to send threatening letters to local election officials and defending voter intimidation programs when courts have already ruled against them runs counter to not just DOJ's election policies, but also its commitment to uphold the rule of law,” Young said.

Republicans face a tough midterm landscape amid Trump’s sagging approval ratings. In deep-red Louisiana, favored Republican U.S. Senate candidate Julia Letlow has faced a stronger-than-expected challenge from Democrat Jamie Davis.

The monitoring effort is run by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Monitors include Civil Rights Division lawyers, attorneys from local U.S. attorneys’ offices and federal Office of Personnel Management employees, said Harmeet Dhillon, the Civil Rights Division.

A staunch Trump ally who has emerged as a leader of several Justice Department efforts to target Trump’s political enemies, Dhillon said monitors’ role would be “pursuing transparency for elections in an assertive and nondiscriminatory manner.”

The monitors are on the ground to observe, take notes and ask questions of poll workers, she said.

Dhillon’s reasons for the monitoring campaign mirrors officials have traditionally cited for dispatching monitors. Still, local and state elections officials have sought assurances from the Justice Department that monitors will not try to talk to voters or otherwise interfere in the process during the midterms.

The Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan legal group that advocates for voting rights, on Tuesday called on Congress to on federal election monitors. In a briefing on the proposal, the group cited an incident during Wyoming’s Congressional primary in which the state’s Republican governor accused a DOJ monitor of trying to access a voting machine in a manner that was “aggressive, unexpected and disruptive.”

Orleans Parish Clerk of Court Chelsea Napoleon said her office worked for weeks with Landry’s staff to understand the monitors’ roles and what their presence would look like.

Her staff were assured the monitors would simply observe without engaging with voters.

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Kadie Rome, back right, and her nephew, John, bottom right, help load voting machines from a New Orleans East warehouse onto a delivery truck driven by KadieÕs brother, Cory, back left, on Monday, November 2, 2026. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)

Still, their mere presence struck some veteran election officials as unusual. When Justice Department monitors arrived at a polling place at Lafayette High School on Tuesday morning, Lafayette Parish Clerk of Court Louis Perret said it was a first.

Perret said the observers are dressed in civilian clothing, have federal IDs and are taking notes. He said they were not permitted to enter voting booths or speak with voters.

“It’s not normal,” Perret said. “It’s the first time I’ve experienced it and I’ve been here 28 years.”

Staff writers Alyse Pfeil and Claire Taylor contributed to this report.

James Finn covers federal law enforcement for The Times-Picayune | Ĵý. Email him at jfinn@theadvocate.com or contact him on Signal at jamesfinn.82.

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