Federal Election Monitors Will Watch Boston's 275 Precincts Tuesday. Here Is What the Rules Let Them Do, and What They Cannot

The U.S. Department of Justice plans to station election monitors at polling places in Boston and Lowell on Tuesday, Nov. 3, part of what the department's Civil Rights Division described on social media as a deployment of about 1,000 observers across the country, according to WBUR. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon called it "the largest monitoring effort" in the department's history, WBUR reported.

The deployment arrives in a city with 443,178 registered voters, 275 precincts and more than 2,002 trained poll workers, according to the Boston Election Department's pre-election notice, last updated Oct. 29. More than 483 of those poll workers can provide help in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Haitian Creole, Cape Verdean, Russian and Portuguese, the department said.

Those language requirements are the stated reason Boston and Lowell draw federal attention. "It is typical for DOJ to send monitors to areas that have requirements under the Voting Rights Act to offer voting materials and assistance in other languages," the Secretary of the Commonwealth's office said in a statement reported by WCVB. Boston offers bilingual ballots in English and Spanish, English and Chinese, and English and Vietnamese, and Lowell prints ballots in English, Spanish and Khmer, WCVB reported. Federal monitors were also present in both cities for the Sept. 1 state primary, according to WCVB.

Galvin told WBUR that the observers' job is narrow. "The federal observers will be there to verify these are in fact being made available to voters, that the polling locations are accessible, and if there's language issues, that there's services for them, whether it be a ballot printed in their language or translation services," he said. He added that anyone can observe a precinct but no one can interfere with the voting process.

What the monitors may and may not do

The Justice Department told NBC10 Boston that its monitors "will merely observe and report any potential violations of federal law to the Department, which will be reviewed after Election Day." Under the department's monitoring guidelines, as described by NBC10 Boston, monitors wear plain clothes, may not interfere with voting, may not speak with voters inside polling places, report concerns to team leaders and may not carry firearms.

State officials described the same limits. Federal observers "are permitted to silently observe from outside the voting area. They are not permitted to interact with voters inside the polling place, or to interfere with voting in any way," a spokesperson for Galvin's office told WCVB. The office said federal observers will receive the same level of access as all other observers.

Boston's own rules for observers apply on top of that. The Election Department's notice says the area inside the "guardrail" includes the check-in table, the voting booths and the ballot box, and only poll workers and voters belong there. Observers may not interact with voters while they are in the polling place and should ask the warden if they have questions about where to stand. Photography of the polling place is allowed from outside the guardrail, but marked ballots may not be photographed, and audio recording inside a polling place is not permitted under state law, the notice says. Exit polling and voter interviews are permitted outside, within 150 feet of a polling place, as long as they do not block anyone on the way in.

Monitoring itself is not new, and Galvin said so. He told WBUR he has long worked with election monitors and that federal officials have visited Boston and Lowell in past elections. But WBUR also reported that the practice is drawing more attention this year because the Trump administration has tried to exert influence over local elections, and Galvin pointed to what he called "the actions of the Justice Department that in many cases seem to be hostile to the rights of voters." He said he is nonetheless confident in working with the department to keep voting running smoothly.

NBC10 Boston reported that Democratic lawmakers and voting rights advocates have raised concerns that the monitors could intimidate voters. In Lowell, Elections Department Director William Rosenberry told the station residents should not be alarmed. "We have been subject to this monitoring before. This is routine," he said, adding that two teams of two federal monitors are expected to visit polling locations in that city and that independent monitors will be present to observe the federal teams.

Neither the Justice Department nor the city has said publicly how many monitors will be assigned to Boston's 275 precincts, and none of the outlets cited here reported a number for Boston.

Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. Boston's ballot this year consists of three double-sided cards, and voters are told to feed the cards into the tabulator one at a time, waiting for the screen to read "system ready" before inserting the next card, according to the Election Department. Every polling location is wheelchair accessible and equipped with an AutoMark Voter Assist Terminal, the department said.

Mail ballots cannot be returned at polling places. They can be left in any of the city's 22 drop boxes until 8 p.m. Tuesday or delivered to the Election Department at City Hall, and ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 count if they arrive by 5 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 6, the department said.

Anyone who believes a voter is being intimidated, from any source, can raise it with the precinct warden, who is in charge of each polling place under the city's rules. What happens Tuesday, rather than the announcement, will show whether the monitors are background presence or something more. No incident involving a federal monitor in Massachusetts had been reported as of Monday morning.