Cameron County, which includes Harlingen and the surrounding area, was not among the Texas counties selected for federal election monitoring on Tuesday, Nov. 3.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced approximately 1,000 election monitors and observers across all 50 states in what the agency called its largest monitoring effort ever.

Seven Texas counties made the DOJ's published list: Bexar, Dallas, Harris, Waller, Blanco, Bowie and Nueces. Cameron County was not among them.

The DOJ said monitors would check compliance with federal voting rights laws, including the Voting Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and statutes prohibiting voter intimidation. The effort was coordinated by the agency's Civil Rights Division.

It marked the first time the DOJ sent monitors and observers to all 50 states. In the 2024 presidential election, the department monitored 86 jurisdictions across 27 states, Axios reported.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division said in the DOJ statement that election integrity has been a top priority for the administration and the division.

Concerns over the deployment

The scale of the effort drew pushback. USA Today reported that voting rights groups, including the NAACP, said they believe the deployment could suppress turnout, particularly among minority voters. The NAACP sued to stop the monitoring program, alleging in its lawsuit that the DOJ had "twisted the Poll Monitoring Program into a tool to pursue baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud."

USA Today also reported that in states with competitive Senate races, the monitored counties had disproportionately high levels of Black and Hispanic residents, according to U.S. Census data.

DOJ spokeswoman Kiersten Pels told USA Today the department prioritizes jurisdictions required to provide language assistance and areas with a shortage of election observation data. Pels said monitors would not question voters about citizenship status at the polls.

Texas counties on the list

The seven Texas counties selected include some of the state's largest. The San Antonio Express-News reported that Bexar County Elections Administrator Michele Carew said federal monitors were subject to restrictions on their access to polling locations.

Carew said at a Nov. 3 news conference that monitors told her they came to Bexar County partly because the county had received a backlog of 45,000 voter registration applications from the Texas Department of Public Safety weeks before early voting began. They also said they were checking whether the county staffed bilingual workers, according to the Express-News.

Strong early turnout in Texas

Cameron County was not assigned federal monitors under the DOJ's published plan, but local voters participated in the same Nov. 3 general election as the seven counties on the list.

The Cameron County Elections Department published early-voting turnout information for the November general and special elections.

Statewide, more than 7.7 million Texans cast early ballots, topping the previous midterm record set in 2018, according to preliminary secretary of state figures reported by The Texas Tribune.

Polls across Texas were open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Nov. 3. Voters with questions about federal voting rights laws can call the DOJ's election issues hotline at 1-800-253-3931 or email [email protected].