Trump officials to send election observers to California and New Jersey

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.

The department announced it was 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 department, is “to ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law”.

“Transparency 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,” Pam Bondi, the attorney general, said in a statement to the Associated Press.

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 4 November. New Jersey has an open seat for governor that has attracted major spending by both parties and California is holding a special election aimed at redrawing the state’s congressional map to counter Republican gerrymandering efforts elsewhere ahead of the 2026 midterms.

The justice department’s efforts are also the latest salvo in the Republican party’s preoccupation with election integrity after Donald Trump spent years refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election and falsely railing against mail-in voting as rife with fraud. Democrats fear the new administration will attempt to gain an upper hand in next year’s midterms with similarly unfounded allegations of fraud.

The announcement comes days after the Republican parties in both states wrote letters to the department requesting their assistance. Some leading Democrats in the states condemned the decision.

New Jersey attorney general Matt Platkin called the move “highly inappropriate” and said the DoJ “has not even attempted to identify a legitimate basis for its actions”.

Rusty Hicks, chair of the California Democratic party, said: “No amount of election interference by the California Republican party is going to silence the voices of California voters.”

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.

“In 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,” wrote GOP chair Corrin Rankin.

The state is set to vote 4 November on a redistricting proposition that would dramatically redraw California’s congressional lines to add as many as five additional Democratic seats to its US House delegation.

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.

California is one of at least eight states the department has sued as part of a wide-ranging request for detailed voter roll information involving at least half the states. The department has not said why it wants the data.

Brandon Richards, a spokesman for Governor Gavin Newsom, said the department has no standing to “interfere” with California’s election because the ballot contains only a state-specific initiative and has no federal races.

“Deploying these federal forces appears to be an intimidation tactic meant for one thing: suppress the vote,” he said.

Orange county registrar of voters Bob Page described his county’s elections as “accessible, accurate, fair, secure, and transparent.”

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.

“Voters can have confidence their ballot is handled securely and counted accurately,” he said.

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, California has gained a reputation for tallies that can drag on for weeks – and sometimes longer.

California’s request echoed a similar letter sent by New Jersey Republicans asking the DOJ to dispatch election monitors to “oversee the receipt and processing of vote-by-mail ballots” and “monitor access to the board of elections around the clock” in suburban Passaic county ahead of the state’s governor’s race.

The New Jersey Republican state committee told Dhillon federal intervention was necessary to ensure an accurate vote count in the heavily Latino county that was once a Democratic stronghold, but shifted to Trump in last year’s presidential race.

David Becker, a former DoJ attorney who has served as an election monitor and trained them, said the work is typically done by department lawyers who are prohibited from interfering at polling places.

But Becker, now executive director of the Center for Election Integrity & Research, said local jurisdictions normally agree to the monitors’ presence.

If the administration tried to send monitors without a clear legal rationale to a place where local officials did not want them, “that could result in chaos,” he said.