California to deploy election observers to counter DOJ during redistricting vote
California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) said Monday the state will monitor the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) election observers ahead of next week’s general election.
During a virtual news conference, Bonta said observers will provide “oversight and accountability” of the federal monitors, according to KCRA in Sacramento.
“[The federal monitors] will not be allowed to interfere in ways that the law prohibits,” Bonta added.
On Friday, the DOJ announced its Civil Rights Division, led by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, will monitor polling sites in five California counties ahead of the election: Kern, Riverside, Fresno, Orange and Los Angeles. It will also monitor polling sites in Passaic County, N.J., where voters are picking a new governor.
The move came after the California Republican Party, in a letter to Dillon obtained by The Associated Press, asked the department to provide monitors in the five counties.
In the letter, California GOP Chair Corrin Rankin wrote, “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.”
The Hill has reached out to the DOJ and the California GOP for comment on the state’s move.
In its Friday release, the DOJ noted that it regularly monitors elections across the community, which Bonta acknowledged during his Monday news conference.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), however, said Friday in a video on the social platform X that the DOJ “has no business” monitoring the polling sites and that the move is “about voter intimidation.”
“This is a bridge too far, and I hope people understand it’s a bridge that [the Trump administration is] trying to build, a scaffolding, for all across this country in next November’s elections,” Newsom added, referencing the 2026 midterms.
In California, voters will decide on Proposition 50, which, if passed, would transfer control of the state’s congressional map from an independent commission to the Legislature through 2030. The measure, backed by Newsom, was added to the ballot in response to the GOP-controlled Texas Legislature redrawing its maps in August.