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Rep. Joe Morelle (D–N.Y.) said 275 Democratic House staffers have signed up to serve as official election observers for the Nov. 3 midterms, a record for the party.

Morelle, the top Democrat on the Committee on House Administration, disclosed the figure during a press call on Oct. 19 hosted by Try And Stop Us, an activist group.

“We’ve never had so much interest by our staff who want to be trained to be official election observers,” Morelle said.

He said the volunteers will be trained and sent across the country in their official capacities to watch vote counts and recounts and to keep contemporaneous notes. Those firsthand accounts would form a record if a House race is challenged or contested, he said, because the committee recommends to the full House which candidate should be seated.

Morelle said Democrats will come to an agreement with their Republican counterparts on the committee before deploying anyone.

The two sides will pick roughly 40 to 60 races that polling shows are likely to be the closest. Republicans will send observers to the same races, he said, and observers from both parties are barred from interfering.

The House has run the program for decades through the committee, which is chaired by Rep. Bryan Steil (R–Wis.).

The committee sent more than 75 observers to 67 congressional districts on Election Day in 2024, typically deployed in bipartisan pairs. Any House staffer except interns can volunteer, according to the committee’s program page for Republicans.

Steil said in a July 15 statement launching this year’s program that the observers “are our eyes and ears on the ground ensuring the integrity of Congressional elections.” The committee trained more than 200 House staff as observers in 2024.