The counties include Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky’s two largest cities and Democratic strongholds. A letter from the department’s Civil Rights Division to Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams and State Board of Elections Executive Director Karen Sellers said monitors would be sent to both counties.

The Justice Department says its monitors will observe and take notes, not interfere with voting or speak to voters inside polling places. The department told state officials the monitors would introduce themselves to poll managers.

Fayette County Clerk’s Office spokesperson Quin Welch said county officials met with Justice Department representatives on Monday. Welch said the federal team described visits by groups of two or three monitors to check accessibility for voters with disabilities, distribution of provisional ballots and required language assistance. The county clerk’s office said monitors must comply with Kentucky law.

Jefferson County Clerk David Yates’ office also said the department identified language assistance, polling-place accessibility and provisional ballots as areas of focus. But the office said routine federal monitoring inside polling places is not authorized under Kentucky law without other applicable legal authority. It said the county had offered other ways for federal representatives to raise concerns, review public election information and report possible voting-rights violations.

Yates said the department indicated that about a dozen monitors would visit Louisville. He said they are Justice Department employees acting as civil election monitors, not federal law enforcement officers.

The Justice Department said it will have about 1,000 monitors in counties across all 50 states, but will not release the full list of locations until Election Day. The department said monitors will report possible violations of federal law for review after the election. It has sent election monitors in previous elections, including during the Biden administration.

The department has not explained publicly why it selected Jefferson and Fayette from Kentucky’s 120 counties. Adams’ office had not commented publicly as of Monday afternoon.

University of Kentucky law professor Josh Douglas described federal election monitoring as a normal practice, saying the federal government often sends monitors to polling places.

Kentucky Democratic Party Chair Colmon Elridge alleged that the choice of the two counties was politically motivated, pointing to Democratic candidates Zach Dembo and U.S. Rep. Morgan McGarvey, whose districts include Fayette and Jefferson counties, respectively. Elridge said the party would not tolerate interference and expected federal monitors to follow the rules.

The planned monitoring comes amid a broader effort by the Trump administration’s Justice Department to deploy observers nationwide during the midterm election. Earlier this month, signs at a presidential rally in Northern Kentucky directed attendees to a Republican National Committee-funded website recruiting election volunteers to watch polls.