DOJ Voting Monitor Threatens Colorado's Toss-Up 8th District Race

The most dangerous thing about next week’s election isn’t the polling data. It’s not even the tightness of the race in Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, which is currently rated as a toss-up between GOP incumbent Gabe Evans and Democratic challenger Manny Rutinel. The real threat is the Justice Department, which President Donald Trump has ordered to monitor voting in Adams County.

To hear Mike Littwin of the Colorado Sun tell it, we are looking at a setup where the referee is also a player. Littwin returned from two weeks in Andalusia, Spain — hale and hearty but "scared to death" — to find a political landscape where the rules of engagement have shifted. He argues that focusing on whether Democrats can retake the House or Senate is a distraction from a more immediate danger: interference.

The distinction matters because of where the monitoring is happening. The Justice Department will watch over Adams County, which leans Democratic, but it will not monitor Weld County, which leans Republican. Both counties have portions within the 8th District. That asymmetry is the crux of the issue for neighbors in the valley who are trying to figure out if their vote will actually count.

Littwin isn’t talking about some wild conspiracy theory, a genre he leaves to "MAGA World." He is pointing to election officials who are openly worried that Trump will meddle with the vote, though they aren’t even sure exactly how. The New York Times reported Tuesday that officials across the country are planning for worst-case scenarios. In Alaska, where Republicans hold a potential close race, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit to preemptively block results if the GOP loses. The GOP-led Alaska administration has already filed a countersuit against its own party’s move.

This isn’t new behavior. Littwin points to the January 6th assault on the Capitol, which was meant to stop the counting of Electoral College votes. Trump has since pardoned all the insurrectionists, even those involved in that specific effort to overturn an election.

The financial stakes are high enough that the private sector is involved, too. Elon Musk has poured nearly $450 million into races across the country. If Democrats gain control of Congress, they are expected to begin investigations into the Trump family and the tech executives who have profited under his administration. That is a strong motive for ensuring the outcome stays in familiar hands.

For folks in the 8th District, this means the election isn’t just about who gets elected. It’s about whether the machinery of democracy will function as expected when the stakes get high. The math holds up on one level: if the vote is close, and the monitoring is uneven, the outcome could be contested before the ink is dry.

Littwin notes that this is "certainly the last, best chance to pull in the reins on Donald Trump’s all-out assault on democracy" before he leaves office, hopefully, in 2029. He even takes a detour to mention Barack Obama’s Cheesecake Factory line on the White House ballroom, asking who didn’t love it. It’s a small, human detail that underscores how far the conversation has drifted from policy to personality and power.

The question is whether we will treat this as a standard midterm or an act of war against the process itself. Election officials are preparing for nine different ways Trump could interfere, according to Reuters. They don’t know which one will happen, but they are ready for the worst.

As we head into Election Day, Littwin leaves us with a simple directive: don’t worry about the polls. Worry about whether Trump will undermine the election.