Ahead of California’s special election, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it would deploy election monitors to Fresno polling sites — causing political pushback — but local election officials reported the federal presence on Election Day was minimal and quiet.
Only two DOJ election monitors spent time at the Woodward Park Library voting center Tuesday afternoon, simply observing the process, Fresno County Clerk/Registrar of Voters James Kus told The Bee. Plus, two observers were present on Wednesday at the Fresno County Elections Office as ballots were being counted, he said. The other 51 voting centers throughout the county did not see DOJ observers on Election Day.
There were far more local, state and advocacy observers at the polls on Tuesday than federal monitors, Kus said.
Fresno was one of five California counties where the DOJ said it sent monitors to “ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law,” in the Nov. 4 election. The sole item on the ballot was Prop. 50 — Gov. Gavin Newsom’s now passed proposal to temporarily redraw the state’s map of congressional districts to favor Democratic candidates in response to a similar gerrymandering effort in Texas favoring Republicans.
The announcement of the DOJ plan did not include details of exactly how, where or when federal personnel would observe the five counties’ elections, just that the department would monitor polling sites.
The announcement was more impactful than the actual election monitoring, Kus said.
Shortly after the DOJ announcement, Gov. Newsom on social media called the effort an intimidation tactic by the Trump administration to suppress the vote . A slew of Democrats and voting rights activists also worried that the monitors could undermine the voting process or sow doubts about the elections on social media.
Previously, Kus believed that federal observers had last been present in Fresno County eight years ago. On Wednesday, he said on Election Day he discovered that a few DOJ personnel observed the election in Fresno County in 2024 . Unlike this year’s DOJ observers, their presence did not make national headlines.
