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.
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 “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, which typically leaves polling places relatively quiet on Election Day. But in pursuit of accuracy and counting every vote, the nation’s most populous state has gained a reputation for tallies that can drag on for weeks — and sometimes longer.
In 2024, it took until early December to declare Democrat Adam Gray the winner in his Central Valley district, the final congressional race to be decided in the nation last year.
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 that federal intervention was necessary to ensure an accurate vote count in the heavily Latino county that was once a Democratic stronghold, but shifted to Mr. Trump’s column in last year’s presidential race.
The county could be critical to GOP gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli’s hopes against Democrat Mikie Sherrill. But the letter cited previous voter fraud cases in the county and alleged a “long and sordid history” of vote-by-mail shenanigans.
In 2020, a judge ordered a new election for a city council seat in Paterson — the largest city in Passaic County — after the apparent winner and others were charged with voter fraud.
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.”
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.
Last year, when the Biden administration was still in power, some Republican-led states said they would not allow federal monitors to access voting locations on Election Day.
Mr. Trump has for years railed against mail voting as part of his repeated false claims that former President Joe Biden’s victory 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.
Earlier this year, Mr. Trump pledged to ban vote-by-mail across the country, something he has no power to do under the U.S. Constitution.
The DOJ’s effort will be overseen by Dhillon’s Civil Rights Division, which will deploy personnel in coordination with U.S. attorney’s offices and work closely with state and local officials, the department said. The department is also soliciting further requests for monitoring in other jurisdictions.
David Becker, a CBS News election law expert and political contributor 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, the 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 didn’t want them, “That could result in chaos,” he said.
