Overview
- The Justice Department plans to send Civil Rights Division monitors to polling sites and elections offices in Los Angeles, Orange, Kern, Riverside and Fresno counties, plus Passaic County, New Jersey, to ensure transparency, ballot security and compliance with federal law.
- California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the state will station its own observers to watch the federal personnel and pledged they will not be allowed to interfere beyond what the law permits.
- The DOJ deployment followed a request from the California Republican Party, which cited reports of incorrect or duplicate ballots and other alleged irregularities in the targeted counties.
- Gov. Gavin Newsom and Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber criticized the move as inappropriate federal involvement that could intimidate voters, with early voting already underway for the Nov. 4 Proposition 50 election.
- The monitoring effort is being overseen by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division led by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, as California officials weigh using staff from the AG’s office, the secretary of state and county registrars for state oversight.