Thousands of volunteers across the United States are training to serve as poll observers on election day, preparing to watch for any interference or presence of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at polling places. The effort comes as the justice department plans to send about 1,000 federal monitors to polling sites, a move critics say could intimidate voters.
Stevie Lyn, a volunteer in Phoenix, Arizona, decided to become a poll observer after ICE raids in her neighborhood left her Latino neighbors afraid to grocery shop, work and vote. "I had to take the anger, because it was eating me alive, and direct it towards a constructive activity," she said.
Training and Preparation
Lyn was trained by the grassroots non-profit organizations Living United for Change in Arizona (Lucha) and the Arizona Center for Empowerment (Ace), both focused on immigrant rights. During the July primary, she observed from 75ft away, the legal distance for poll observers in the state. She reported one campaigner who repeatedly walked with voters beyond the legal line, and poll workers asked the campaigner to stay back.
Lyn has taken election day off work to observe again, hoping for a quiet day. "I just want to be bored to death on 3 November," she said. "That's my goal."
Monitoring ICE and Trump's Poll Watchers
In Arizona, Ace decided to recruit and train volunteers for double duty: monitoring ICE activity in vulnerable neighborhoods and keeping watch at the polls. The group's heat map of ICE activity showed that neighborhoods hit hardest by raids were often the same ones facing barriers to voting, including polling place closures.
"ICE is in our neighborhoods and even people who are citizens are afraid that they'll be taken if they go to vote," said César Fierros, a spokesperson for Lucha. "We see the trucks driving by, the unmarked vehicles driving by. And we're scared because we never know who is going to be in that vehicle."
National Efforts and Legal Limits
Similar preparations are underway across the country. In Pennsylvania, more than 250 people participated in poll watcher training hosted by the state's Democratic party. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has seen 68,000 new volunteers sign up as "democracy defenders" since June, according to Molly McGrath, the ACLU's director of national democracy campaigns.
Justice department monitors carry no special authority, said Lauren Miller Karalunas, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice. "They are subject to the exact same laws that any other observer in the state might be subject to," she said. In most states, local election officials and law enforcement can remove observers who break the rules, federal ones included.
Potential Election Day Scenarios
Experts say the larger danger is that fear keeps people home. Karalunas worries that headlines about dueling armies of observers could lead some voters to skip the polls. Organizers, including the No Kings coalition, have encouraged voters to vote early and together to avoid any election day setbacks.
"For most folks, elections will go exactly as planned," she said. Past predictions of mass observer deployments haven't materialized, and skeptics who watch the process up close often come away reassured, she said. Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor and former Barack Obama justice department official, expects most poll observers will be "massively overprepared" and will spend election day pointing voters to the right polling place.
Organizers in Arizona say preparation is the point. Fierros said the groups want voters to feel confident, even joyful, when they arrive at the polls. "We're not the ones fearmongering," he said. "We're the ones responding to the moment."
