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 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 “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,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.
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 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 DOJ’s efforts are also the latest salvo in the GOP’s preoccupation with election integrity after President 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 Justice Department requesting their assistance. Some leading Democrats in the states blasted the decision.
New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin called the move “highly inappropriate” and said the department “has not even attempted to identify a legitimate basis for its actions.”
Rusty Hicks, chair of the California Democratic Party, said in a statement that “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 Associated Press, 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 Chairwoman Corrin Rankin.
The state is set to vote Nov. 4 on a redistricting proposition that would dramatically redraw California’s congressional lines to add as many as five additional Democratic seats to its U.S. 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 Justice 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.
Election integrity efforts were a focus of Dhillon’s California law practice before she joined the Justice Department. Her practice sued over the state’s election laws in the past, including a 2020 lawsuit on behalf of the California Republican Party challenging ballot collection efforts amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Brandon Richards, a spokesman for Gov. Gavin Newsom, said the DOJ 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 in an email.
