Overview
- The Justice Department said Friday it will monitor polling sites in Los Angeles, Orange, Kern, Riverside and Fresno counties, with additional monitoring in Passaic County, New Jersey.
- DOJ said the effort is led by the Civil Rights Division under Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon to ensure transparency, ballot security and compliance with federal law.
- Attorney General Rob Bonta said California will dispatch state observers from his office, the secretary of state and county registrars to watch the federal monitors and prevent any interference.
- Gov. Gavin Newsom and Secretary of State Shirley Weber criticized the federal deployment as unnecessary and potentially intimidating, while Bonta described the plan as unnecessary but welcome.
- The California Republican Party requested the monitors, and the deployment comes as voters decide Proposition 50, a special-election measure on congressional redistricting; early voting is underway.