Attorney General Merrick Garland has said the Justice Department has an “obligation” to ensure “free and fair” elections this November as the DOJ touts its election security efforts ahead of the midterm elections.
The Biden DOJ is promising to ensure a safe election as Republicans and Democrats battle for control over the House and Senate on Nov. 8.
“The Justice Department has an obligation to prevent — to guarantee a free and fair vote by everyone who is qualified to vote, and will not permit voters to be intimidated,” Garland said during a press conference.
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The Justice Department then released “information on efforts to protect the right to vote, prosecute election fraud, and secure elections” last Wednesday, saying that its Criminal Division, National Security Division, and Civil Rights Division were working together “to ensure that all qualified voters have the opportunity to cast their ballots and have their votes counted free of discrimination, intimidation, or fraud in the election process, and to ensure that our elections are secure and free from foreign malign influence and interference.”
The DOJ said last week that its Criminal Division “oversees the enforcement of federal laws that criminalize certain forms of election fraud and vindicate the integrity of the federal election process.”
The department said the 94 U.S. Attorneys’ Offices “will work with specially-trained FBI personnel in each district to ensure that complaints from the public involving possible election fraud are handled appropriately” up through Election Day, noting that the federal prosecutions “are responsible for enforcing the federal criminal laws that prohibit various forms of election fraud” and “are also responsible for enforcing federal criminal law prohibiting unlawful threats of violence against election workers, and prohibiting voter intimidation and voter suppression.”
The DOJ’s National Security Division supervises the investigation and prosecution of cases affecting or relating to national security, including those related to foreign influence or interference, and the department said the division “will work closely with counterparts at the FBI and our U.S. Attorneys’ Offices to protect our nation’s elections from any national security threats.”
The FBI has said the three main adversaries of concern are Russia, China, and Iran.
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The Justice Department also noted that its Civil Division is responsible for ensuring compliance with federal laws that protect the right to vote and said that on Election Day, it will “implement a comprehensive program to help ensure the right to vote.”
A senior FBI official said in early October that the bureau “received over 1,000 tips” related to possible election threats between June 2021 and July 2022, with roughly 11% of those tips meeting the “federal threshold” to be “further evaluated and looked at as a potential threat, or as a potential trend, or some sort of indicator.” The FBI said that, of those investigations, four had resulted in arrests.
“I would just continue to say that threats to election workers are a priority for the FBI,” a senior FBI official said. “All of those threats are taken seriously, all of them reviewed, and where we can, we initiate federal investigations, and where we can’t, we try to give good guidance on how they can move forward maybe in the state and local sphere, or identify better practices to ensure that they remain safe and secure.”
More than 21 million people have already voted early ahead of the November midterm elections, according to the University of Florida’s U.S. Election Project, with 8.7 million in-person early votes and 12.9 million mail ballots returned so far. The project said that more than 56 million mail ballots have been requested.
The Justice Department announced in July 2021 that it had launched an Election Threats Task Force.
“To protect the electoral process for all voters, we must identify threats against those responsible for administering elections, whether federal, state, or local,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said.
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Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite held a virtual discussion the next day with roughly 300 election officials and workers, during which the election community “received an update on the work of the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force, including a briefing from the FBI on communication and coordination with FBI Election Crime Coordinators in the lead up to the November election.”
Amy Cohen, the executive director of the National Association of State Election Directors, testified in August that election groups were frustrated with the task force’s responsiveness, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee “that taken with the limited substantive response from the FBI and law enforcement, many NASED members find that reporting to anyone feels pointless.”
