California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Monday that the state will dispatch its own observers to monitor federal election watchers deployed by the Trump administration ahead of an election that will decide whether to move forward with redistricting plans.
Bonta’s announcement came in response to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s saying Friday that the Justice Department would monitor polls in six jurisdictions leading up to the Nov. 4 election, including five in California, following a request from the California Republican Party.
“The feigned worry by the Republican Party I don’t think is a good source of true raising of concerns and servicing of concerns about the elections,” Bonta, a Democrat, said during a virtual news conference.
While Bonta did not provide many details about what the state’s observers would do, he said the registrar of voters, the state secretary of state’s office and his office “would have some role potentially.”
“There will be observers of the election monitors, so-called election monitors, that the DOJ is sending,” Bonta told reporters, adding that the federal watchers “will not be allowed to do things that they’re not allowed to do. They’re not going to be allowed to interfere in ways that the law prohibits.”
He called the federal government’s monitoring plans “unnecessary but welcome.”
Bondi on Friday directed the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, led by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, to dispatch personnel who will work in coordination with U.S. attorneys’ offices.
Monitoring is set to take place in five counties in California — Kern, Riverside, Fresno, Orange and Los Angeles. Monitoring is also set for Passaic County in New Jersey, where voters will pick a new governor.
Bonta argued that President Donald Trump and his allies are using poll monitors to call the integrity of elections in California into question as voters there cast ballots that will determine the future of Democrats’ redistricting plans.
“He is laying the groundwork. He is socializing an idea that is very dangerous about potential election interference and fraud when it does not exist,” Bonta said Monday.
The California Republican Party and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Bonta’s remarks.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is spearheading the redistricting effort in his state, said in a video statement Friday: “This about voter intimidation. This is about voter suppression. Period.”
California Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber, a Democrat, also criticized the move, saying in a statement Saturday that the Trump administration “has not provided our office with any justification for the need to deploy federal monitors to these five counties, in what is a nonfederal special election.”
“We will not permit tactics masquerading as oversight to erode voter confidence or intimidate Californians,” Weber said.
Texas set off the redistricting battle this year when Republican lawmakers, with Trump’s encouragement, redrew the state’s congressional lines with the aim of increasing the number of Republicans winning House races in next year’s midterm elections. That sparked a retaliatory redistricting effort from California.
The fight has since extended to other states.
Missouri and North Carolina have enacted new maps to add two more GOP seats each, and Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, a Republican called a special legislative session Monday to weigh a new congressional map in his state.
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