Volunteers watch Davidson County polls for intimidation

Volunteers were posted at nearly every Davidson County polling site Tuesday.

Guardians of Democracy, a nonpartisan group of attorneys and community members, placed watchers at 178 polling locations across the county. Volunteers completed two months of training that covered election laws before taking their posts.

Margaret Akers, a retiree, monitored the Bellevue Church of Christ polling site on Election Day. She said she joined because of the federal government's presence at voting locations. "I just wanted to make sure that all of our Nashville friends and neighbors and fellow citizens didn't feel intimidated at all when they came to the polls," she told WPLN News. "If lines are exceedingly excessive, that would be a concern, and if there are folks here from, this would be the worst case scenario from the DOJ and people feel intimidated for whatever reason."

The U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday morning that it was sending 1,000 "election monitors" to all 50 states. Tennessee's monitors are working in Davidson, Shelby and Knox counties. Lisa Quigley, a founder of Guardians of Democracy, said DOJ monitors had visited at least eight Nashville locations by Tuesday afternoon.

"They have a checklist of things that they're looking for," Quigley told WPLN News. "They're going through their checklist. They're not interacting with voters and they are staying for between 20 minutes and an hour and then they're leaving and going to the next place." Quigley said no inappropriate behavior had been reported, but called the monitors' presence unusual. The DOJ called its deployment the largest monitoring effort in history and the first time monitors have been sent to all 50 states.

The Nashville sites visited were Hadley Park, Churchwell School, Belmont Curb Center, Sevier Park, Centennial Performing Arts School, Howard School, Charlotte Park Elementary School and Morgan Park Community Center. Guardians watch for anything that could hinder a person's right to vote, including a poll worker turning away a qualified voter or a site lacking accommodations for people with disabilities. Anything suspicious is reported to one of the group's attorneys, who then notifies the Davidson County Election Commission.