The Trump administration said on Friday that the Justice Department will monitor polling sites in California and New Jersey ahead of the Nov. 4 election, amid requests by Republican Party officials in those states.
Although election monitoring by the Justice Department is not uncommon, it will likely heighten tensions as voters weigh in on some of the nation’s most closely watched races. President Trump has pushed the Justice Department to pursue parts of his agenda, including going after his political enemies, which has eroded its traditional independence. Mr. Trump also blamed his 2020 election loss on rigged voting, although there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Voter fraud is exceedingly rare, but Mr. Trump and other Republicans have since claimed it is rampant, particularly voting by mail, which is how most Californians vote. Democrats have called the argument a ruse for voter suppression.
“This administration has made no secret of its goal to undermine free and fair elections,” Brandon Richards, a spokesman for Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, said in a statement. “Deploying these federal forces appears to be an intimidation tactic meant for one thing: suppress the vote.”
Both California and New Jersey are led by Democrats and have key races or issues on the ballot that could affect the balance of power between the parties.
In New Jersey, Representative Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, and Jack Ciattarelli, a Republican, are running in a close race to succeed Gov. Phil Murphy.
In California, Democrats are looking to a ballot measure, Proposition 50, to improve their chances of regaining control of the House in next year’s midterm elections. The measure asks voters to revise California’s congressional districts to favor Democrats in response to recent redistricting measures by Republican-led states such as Texas to favor their party.
The Justice Department’s announcement followed complaints last weekend by the New Jersey Republican Party that Democratic members of the Board of Elections in Passaic County had blocked the use of security cameras in ballot storage areas and refused to require a sign-in log for workers with access to mail-in ballots.
Then on Monday, the chairwoman of the California Republican Party, Corrin Rankin, wrote to the Justice Department, complaining that the party had received “reports of irregularities” in some counties that they feared “will undermine either the willingness of voters to participate in the election or their confidence in the announced results of the election.”
The letter asked for monitors to be sent to five counties where, the party asserted, some voters had received incorrect ballots in past elections and where Republicans had raised concerns about the maintenance and accuracy of voter lists.
The Justice Department said in a news release that personnel from the agency’s Civil Rights Division would be stationed at polling places and offices of registrars of voters “to ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law.”
The department said those workers would coordinate with the local U.S. attorney’s offices, but it did not specify how many observers would be deployed or the types of irregularities they would seek.
“This Department of Justice is committed to upholding the highest standards of election integrity,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “We will commit the resources necessary to ensure the American people get the fair, free, and transparent elections they deserve.”
California mails ballots to all registered voters, and most votes are cast by mail, with polling locations where voters can drop their ballots off in person if they prefer not to send them. In last November’s election, 81 percent of voters in California voted by mail, according to the Secretary of State’s office.
Democrats greeted the announcement with skepticism, saying the move was a politically motivated effort to disrupt consequential votes in November.
Shirley Weber, California’s secretary of state, said that the Justice Department provided no justification for deploying monitors “in what is a nonfederal special election.”
“We will not permit tactics masquerading as oversight to erode voter confidence or intimidate Californians,” she said. “Our voters have earned the right to cast their ballots free from surveillance or interference — from anyone.”
The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department enforces a range of statutes that protect the right to vote, and election officials say such monitoring has been conducted in the past under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
In 2022, under the Biden administration, the department monitored compliance with federal voting rights laws in 64 jurisdictions in 24 states for that year’s general election. In 2024, it sent monitors to elections in 86 jurisdictions, including all of the major swing states.
Since 2020, when President Trump falsely claimed that he had lost because Democrats had stolen the election, MAGA Republicans have maintained a relentless focus on voter fraud and have trained election observers to aggressively search for possible irregularities at polling places.
Scores of recounts, audits and studies, some conducted by Republicans, in the wake of Mr. Trump’s loss in 2020 turned up no evidence of widespread problems with the vote, nor has any evidence materialized in more recent elections.
Nonetheless, in recent months, the Justice Department has sued at least a half-dozen states, including California, demanding detailed voter data, ostensibly to ensure that ineligible voters were being removed from official rosters.
In California, federal officials said monitors would be stationed in Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside Counties — three of the most heavily populated areas of Southern California — and across Fresno and Kern counties in the Central Valley. The targeted counties represent a population of some 17 million people and include some of the most heavily Latino areas of the state.
Dean Logan, the registrar-recorder for Los Angeles County, said in a statement that federal monitors, “like all election observers,” were welcome to observe election activities at designated locations. He added that “the presence of election observers is not unusual and is a standard practice across the country.”
In New Jersey, Justice Department officials said they would monitor polling in populous and immigrant-heavy Passaic County.
“If there’s nothing to hide or wrong, why the concern in having the DOJ observe the elections departments?” the California Republican Party asked in a social media post on Friday that tagged Mr. Newsom’s office. “Isn’t transparency a good thing that only strengthens trust in our process, system, and government?”
Shawn Hubler is The Times’s Los Angeles bureau chief, reporting on the news, trends and personalities of Southern California.
Laurel Rosenhall is a Sacramento-based reporter covering California politics and government for The Times.
The post Justice Department Will Monitor Elections in California and New Jersey appeared first on New York Times.
