LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 The Department of Justice is preparing to send federal election observers to California and New Jersey next month, targeting two Democratic states holding off-year elections following requests from state Republican parties.<\/p>\n
The DOJ announced Friday that it is planning to monitor polling sites in Passaic County, New Jersey, and five counties in southern and central California: Los Angeles, Orange, Kern, Riverside and Fresno. The goal, according to the DOJ, is \u201cto ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law.”<\/p>\n
\u201cTransparency at the polls translates into faith in the electoral process, and this Department of Justice is committed to upholding the highest standards of election integrity,\u201d Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement to The Associated Press.<\/p>\n
Election monitoring is a routine function of the Justice Department, but the focus on California and New Jersey comes as both states are set to hold closely-watched elections with national consequences on Nov. 4. New Jersey has an open seat for governor<\/a> and California is holding a special election aimed at redrawing the state’s congressional map<\/a> to counter Republican gerrymandering efforts elsewhere ahead of the 2026 midterms.<\/p>\n The DOJ’s efforts are the latest salvo in the GOP\u2019s preoccupation with election integrity after President Donald Trump<\/a> spent years refusing to accept the results<\/a> of the 2020 election and falsely railing against mail-in voting<\/a> as rife with fraud. Democrats fear the new administration will attempt to gain an upper hand in next year\u2019s midterms with similarly unfounded allegations of fraud.<\/p>\n The announcement comes days after the Republican parties in both states wrote letters to the DOJ requesting their assistance. Some leading Democrats in the states blasted the decision.<\/p>\n New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin called the move \u201chighly inappropriate\u201d and said the DOJ \u201chas not even attempted to identify a legitimate basis for its actions.\u201d<\/p>\n Rusty Hicks, chair of the California Democratic Party, said in a statement that \u201cNo amount of election interference by the California Republican Party is going to silence the voices of California voters.”<\/p>\n California’s House districts at stake<\/p>\n The letter from the California GOP, sent Monday and obtained by the AP, asked Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, to provide monitors to observe the election in the five counties.<\/p>\n \u201cIn recent elections, we have received reports of irregularities in these counties that we fear will undermine either the willingness of voters to participate in the election or their confidence in the announced results of the election,\u201d wrote GOP Chairwoman Corrin Rankin.<\/p>\n The state is set to vote Nov. 4 on a redistricting proposition that would dramatically redraw California\u2019s congressional lines<\/a> to add as many as five additional Democratic seats to its U.S. House delegation.<\/p>\n Each of the counties named, they alleged, has experienced recent voting issues, such as sending incorrect or duplicate ballots to voters. They also take issue with how Los Angeles and Orange counties maintain their voter rolls.<\/p>\n California is one of at least eight states<\/a> the Justice Department has sued as part of a wide-ranging request for detailed voter roll information<\/a> involving at least half the states. The department has not said why it wants the data.<\/p>\n Brandon Richards, a spokesman for Gov. Gavin Newsom, said the DOJ has no standing to \u201cinterfere\u201d with California’s election because the ballot contains only a state-specific initiative and has no federal races.<\/p>\n \u201cDeploying these federal forces appears to be an intimidation tactic meant for one thing: suppress the vote,” he said in an email.<\/p>\n Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page said he welcomes anyone who wants to watch the county’s election operations and said it’s common to have local, state, federal and even international observers. He described Orange County’s elections as \u201caccessible, accurate, fair, secure, and transparent.\u201d<\/p>\n Los Angeles County Clerk Dean Logan said election observers are standard practice across the country and that the county, with 5.8 million registered voters, is continuously updating and verifying its voter records.<\/p>\n “Voters can have confidence their ballot is handled securely and counted accurately,” he said.<\/p>\n Most Californians vote using mail ballots returned through the postal service, drop boxes or at local voting centers. But in pursuit of accuracy and counting every vote, the nation\u2019s most populous state has gained a reputation for tallies that can drag on for weeks \u2014 and sometimes longer.<\/p>\n In 2024, it took until early December to declare Democrat Adam Gray the winner<\/a> in his Central Valley district, the final congressional race to be decided in the nation last year.<\/p>\n Passaic County the target in New Jersey<\/p>\n California’s request echoed a similar letter sent by New Jersey Republicans<\/a> asking the DOJ to dispatch election monitors to \u201coversee the receipt and processing of vote-by-mail ballots\u201d and \u201cmonitor access to the Board of Elections around the clock” in suburban Passaic County ahead of the state\u2019s governor’s race.<\/p>\n The New Jersey Republican State Committee told Dhillon that federal intervention was necessary to ensure an accurate vote count in the heavily Latino county<\/a> that was once a Democratic stronghold<\/a>, but shifted to President Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> column in last year’s presidential race.<\/p>\n The county could be critical to GOP gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli\u2019s hopes against Democrat Mikie Sherrill.<\/p>\n The letter, which cited previous voter fraud cases in the county and alleged a \u201clong and sordid history\u201d of vote-by-mail shenanigans, came after Republicans said Democratic members of the Passaic County Board of Elections voted against implementing additional ballot security measures, including using cameras in ballot storage areas.<\/p>\n In 2020, a judge ordered a new election<\/a> for a city council seat in Paterson \u2014 the largest city in Passaic County \u2014 after the apparent winner and others were charged with voter fraud.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reason that we have concerns about this is because there\u2019s been a significant history of fraud,” said Kate Gibbs, executive director of the NJGOP, which is also weighing whether to request additional DOJ monitoring in a number of other counties.<\/p>\n Platkin said the state is committed to ensuring its elections are fair and secure. With the DOJ’s announcement, he said the attorney general’s office is “considering all of our options to prevent any effort to intimidate voters or interfere with our elections.\u201d<\/p>\n Election observers are nothing new<\/p>\n Local election offices and polling places around the country already have observers from both political parties to ensure rules are followed. The DOJ also has a long history of sending observers to jurisdictions that have histories of voting rights violations to ensure compliance with federal civil rights laws.<\/p>\n Trump has for years railed against mail voting as part of his repeated false claims<\/a> that former President Joe Biden\u2019s victory<\/a> in 2020 was rigged. He alleges it is riddled with fraud, even though numerous studies have found no evidence of widespread fraud in U.S. elections.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, Trump pledged<\/a> to ban vote-by-mail across the country, something he has no power to do<\/a> under the U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\n The DOJ\u2019s effort will be overseen by Dhillon\u2019s Civil Rights Division, which will deploy personnel in coordination with U.S. attorney\u2019s offices and work closely with state and local officials, the department said.<\/p>\n The department also is soliciting further requests for monitoring in other jurisdictions.<\/p>\n David Becker, a former DOJ attorney who has served as an election monitor and trained them, said monitors are prohibited from interfering at polling places.<\/p>\n But Becker, now executive director of the Center for Election Integrity & Research, said local jurisdictions normally agree to the monitors\u2019 presence.<\/p>\n If the administration tried to send monitors without a clear legal rationale to a place where local officials didn\u2019t want them, \u201cThat could result in chaos,” he said.<\/p>\n Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writers Nicholas Riccardi in Denver and Mike Catalini in Trenton, New Jersey, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 The Department of Justice is preparing to send federal election observers to California and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[7,1054,112,622,114,113,17697,1362],"class_list":["post-22060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-california","tag-doj","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-county","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-november-elections","tag-prop-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}