The Justice Department is sending federal election monitors to Fairfax County for the August 4 primary.
Fairfax made a list of 15 jurisdictions across six states — Virginia, Arizona, Michigan, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New Hampshire. In Virginia, exactly two counties were picked: Fairfax and Prince William.
This did not come out of nowhere. The Fairfax County Republican Committee has been raising the alarm for years, to an audience that wasn’t listening.
Committee Chairman Katie Gorka put it plainly:
“For a number of years we have been flagging concerns about known and potential non-citizen voting, concerns which have not been addressed.”
Read that last clause again. Concerns which have not been addressed.
Not investigated. Not answered. Not even acknowledged. For years, this Committee did the unglamorous work — showing up, filing the questions, putting the concerns on the record — and Fairfax County’s response was silence.
Now there are federal eyes on the process, and the Committee’s position hasn’t moved an inch:
“Given these many issues, we welcome the presence of election monitors and feel that they will help ensure confidence in Virginia’s electoral process.”
We welcome them. That is what confidence sounds like.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said the jurisdictions were chosen because “there may have been some problems in recent elections.” The stated goal: increase voter confidence and make sure everyone has appropriate access to vote — including voters facing language barriers and voters with disabilities.
Fairfax County’s Office of Elections had the same chance to welcome the monitors that the Committee took. Spokesman Sean Stewart said this instead:
“Our office has no additional information at this time. The Fairfax County Office of Elections adheres to state law and supporting guidance from the Virginia Department of Elections in administering county elections.”
We follow the rules. That’s the whole posture — procedural, defensive, and conspicuously short of the one sentence that costs nothing to say: we’re glad they’re coming.
The Committee said it. The office running your elections didn’t.
The state party was less shy. Lamont Bagby — chair of the Democratic Party of Virginia and a state senator representing Richmond and Henrico County — went after the monitors directly:
“Federal election monitors have long played a role in ensuring compliance with federal law, but that responsibility should never be used to cast doubt on or undermine confidence in our electoral process.”
Notice the move. Bagby concedes the monitors are legitimate and longstanding — then objects to these ones. Not because they’ll find something. Because someone might wonder.
His evidence that there’s nothing to find? Virginia “has a long history of conducting secure, fair, and transparent elections.” Trust us. We’ve earned it.
That is an argument from reputation. Gorka’s is an argument from asking questions and getting stonewalled for years.
An office running clean elections has nothing to fear from someone watching it run clean elections.
The predictable line is that this is a partisan stunt. The Justice Department’s own record says otherwise. DOJ spokeswoman Kiersten Pels, to FFXnow:
“Election monitoring is a longstanding DOJ practice that has continued under presidents of both parties. In 2022, DOJ sent monitors to nine jurisdictions during the primaries, and 27 jurisdictions in 2024.”
Nine jurisdictions in 2022. Twenty-seven in 2024. Nobody called those a crisis.
And Dhillon named the stake out loud:
“It’s also important to make sure that our voting is accurate, so that every citizen who votes has their vote counted equally without being canceled out by somebody who shouldn’t be voting.”
That is the whole argument in one sentence. Not that your vote gets stolen — that it gets cancelled out. It is the same concern Gorka has been filing for years, now said from a podium at the Justice Department.
The DOJ’s letter also asked Fairfax for information on its bilingual election program. Stewart confirmed the county “is subject to the requirements of Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act.” That is the Voting Rights Act being enforced. In Fairfax.
Monitors will be at Fairfax polls for the primary on Tuesday, August 4.
The Committee spent years asking for scrutiny and getting silence. Scrutiny is finally coming — and we’re the ones holding the door open.
Everyone else has three weeks to explain why that bothers them.
