Hennepin County, Minnesota's most populous county and home to Minneapolis, has refused a United States Department of Justice request to place federal election monitors inside polling places during Tuesday's general election, November 3, 2026. The decision, announced on Monday, November 2 by the Hennepin County Attorney's Office, means Justice Department staff may watch from outside a 100-foot boundary around polling locations, in compliance with Minnesota law, but may not enter the voting rooms themselves.
Source: Hennepin County Attorney's Office news release, Nov. 2, 2026
Ramsey County, which includes the state capital, St. Paul, also declined the Justice Department's request for inside access, according to local reporting of the Secretary of State's Monday briefing. The two Twin Cities counties are therefore running Election Day under the same rule: federal monitors outside, Minnesota election judges in charge inside.
What the county decided, and why the 100-foot line matters
In its release, the County Attorney's Office said the Justice Department had asked Hennepin County to approve its staff 'accessing and monitoring polling places' during the November 3 general election, in a request similar to one made before the August 11 primary election. 'After consultation with our office, the Minnesota Secretary of State's Office, and others, Hennepin County denied the request,' the release said. 'DOJ is expected to abide by the County's decision. Monitors will not be permitted inside polling places but instead must remain outside a 100-foot boundary from the polling locations, in compliance with Minnesota law.'
The monitors who do appear are expected to be Justice Department staff in plainclothes. The county says they may attempt to interview voters as they leave a polling place, and it stresses one point voters should know before they go: 'Participation in these interviews is entirely voluntary.' No voter has to answer a monitor's questions in order to vote, to leave, or to go about their day.
Under the rules set out by the Hennepin County Attorney's Office, election monitors and other members of the public may not interfere with a voter's ability to enter the polling place, may not direct or order election judges to take any action, and may not interfere with the operations, administration, management or activities of a polling place.
'Our office is committed to ensuring free, safe, and fair elections,' Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in the release. She added that any reports of potentially unlawful behaviour directed at voters or election workers will be reviewed by her office and, if appropriate, prosecuted. The Minnesota Attorney General's Office has separately stated plans to observe the Justice Department monitoring teams themselves — in effect, the state will be watching the watchers.
The national programme behind the request
The Hennepin request was one small part of the largest federal election-monitoring deployment the Justice Department says it has ever run. In a statement issued on Election Day, the department said it is engaging in 'its largest monitoring effort in history — with approximately 1,000 election monitors and observers deployed, and, for the first time, in all 50 states.' The effort is coordinated by the Civil Rights Division and draws personnel from the division, other Justice Department components, United States Attorney's Offices and federal observers from the Office of Personnel Management. The department's published list of jurisdictions it intends to monitor or observe in Minnesota names Minneapolis, Hennepin County and Ramsey County.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice statement via KELO-FM, Nov. 3, 2026
'Election integrity has been one of the top priorities for this Administration and this Division,' said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division. 'I am very proud we are deploying the largest monitoring effort in DOJ history, and pursuing transparency for elections in an assertive and nondiscriminatory manner.' The department says it has sent election monitors since the enactment of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, across administrations, to check compliance with federal voting-rights laws including the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.
At a Monday election briefing in St. Paul, Secretary of State Steve Simon said federal monitors were expected in both Hennepin and Ramsey counties. FOX 9 reported his office's expectation of roughly five or six two-person teams in Hennepin County and four or five two-person teams in Ramsey County. Simon told voters the monitors were expected to be Justice Department lawyers rather than federal law-enforcement or immigration officers, that they would not be carrying firearms or displaying badges, and — in the words carried by local coverage — 'They cannot disrupt any election activities.' He also noted that monitors who came for the August primary abided by the applicable laws and rules.
How this fits the wider Election Day legal fight
The Minnesota decision landed the same day a federal judge in Washington, D.C., in a separate case brought by the NAACP, declined to block the national monitoring programme but ordered the department to keep its own courtroom commitments — that monitors be administrative or clerical staff, unarmed, out of uniform, without agency insignia and without arrest power. That ruling, and the department's separate court filing that no FBI or Immigration and Customs Enforcement employee will serve as a monitor, form the national backdrop. Minnesota's position is different in kind, not just degree: it is not a court order about who monitors may be, but a county decision, under state law, about where they may stand.
The stakes in Minnesota on Tuesday are high. Voters are choosing the state's next governor and a United States senator, alongside other state and local offices, in a midterm election that will also help decide control of Congress in Washington. Secretary of State Simon reported that more than 886,000 Minnesotans had already voted early, exceeding the total absentee and mail ballots cast in the entire 2022 midterm — a sign of how much of the state's vote was already in before the polling-place argument was settled.
What it means for immigrant and diaspora voters
For Minnesota's immigrant communities — including Punjabi and other South Asian families in the Twin Cities metro — the practical points from the county's own release are simple and worth repeating. A monitor outside a polling place cannot stop you entering, cannot order election judges to do anything, and cannot make you answer questions. If a monitor asks to interview you after you vote, the county says plainly that taking part is entirely voluntary. Anyone who believes they were intimidated or blocked can report it to local election officials at the polling place, call 911 for threats or violence, or reach the Justice Department's election hotline at 1-800-253-3931 — the same number the department published for voting-rights complaints on Election Day.
What happens next
Voting runs through Tuesday in Minnesota, with the Justice Department saying its division personnel will stay in contact with state and local election officials throughout the day. The Minnesota Attorney General's observers are expected to be present as the federal teams work outside Hennepin and Ramsey polling places. Any complaint about conduct at a polling place goes first to local election officials; allegations of unlawful behaviour toward voters or election workers in Hennepin County will be reviewed by County Attorney Moriarty's office. Whether the county's line holds without incident — as it did during the August primary, on Simon's account — will be the Election Day test of a compromise neither side originally asked for: federal eyes on the election, kept a Minnesota-mandated 100 feet away from the door.